Back in June I posted on a bug that had been introduced in that month’s Android Security Update. The bug caused the Pixel 2 XL to be very slow to wake up if you had the ambient display disabled in Settings. At the time, Google acknowledged the bug and indicated that it would be fixed in the July Android Security Update. Which they did but had to essentially break another fix in order to make this fix work.
Clear as mud? Let me explain.
There was a bug that was impacting some users turning off their Pixel 2 XLs that caused a bright flash before the device entered into the ambient display. That fix, which did fix that issue, broke the wake up process when coming out of ambient mode, thus causing the slow wake ups. To fix the slow wake ups, they had to revert that first fix back to its original code.
The problem illustrates just how complex Android is and what the Google team goes through to get things fixed for end users. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t, and sometimes they break something else.
Bugs in the Code
The good news is that a real fix for this is coming in Android P. When Android P goes live, which will likely be next month, Google has indicated a proper fix will be coming to the bugs and that should resolve it. For now, if you are facing this issue, just make sure you have the ambient display enabled on your phone and it will wake up normally.
