At this point, the ‘popping’ issue affecting the speaker of some units of the Google Pixel have been widely reported about. Many users believe that the issue is due to a faulty speaker chamber and have tried getting a replacement from Google. But since not all units of the handsets were affected, the real cause of the problem was unknown.

Now, it looks like Google has managed to fix the ‘popping’ issue with the February security update for the Pixels. Many Pixel owners who had previously complained about a static noise coming from the speaker are now also reporting that the February patch has fixed the problem from them.

Some users, however, report that the static noise has only reduced post the update. It is unclear if Google fixed the problem by slightly lowering the volume of the speaker or by updating the driver files of the speaker. A comment from a Google engineer on the commit in AOSP that fixed the issue does give some insight into how the problem was solved, though.

Use the energy sum of all tracks in the volume_listener effect instead of the max energy.

Has the February OTA update fixed the speaker popping issue on your Pixel or Pixel XL? Drop a comment and let us know.