Last week, a Reddit user reported that they weren’t able to call 911 using their Pixel 3 and later said they were working with Google support to figure out the issue. Yesterday, Google announced what was causing the issue in a reply to the post: an “unintended interaction between the Microsoft Teams app and the underlying Android operating system” (via 9to5Google).
In its comment, Google says that the bug happens when someone is using Android 10 or later and has Teams installed but isn’t logged into the app. The company says that Microsoft will be releasing an update to Teams “soon” to prevent the issue and that there’s an update to Android coming January 4th.
Needless to say, you should uninstall Teams until the update is available if you’re not planning on logging into the app. If you have logged into it at one point but don’t use it frequently, you should also go ahead and double-check that you’re still logged in as well. Even though the bug was reported on the Pixel subreddit, Google recommends that you should keep an eye out for the Teams update if you have “any Android device” running Android 10 or up.
As many commenters pointed out, it’s a bit concerning that any app can make it so you can’t contact emergency services. Google does say it’s only received one report about this bug, but it’s a pretty niche set of circumstances that cause the bug (there’s really no reason to have Teams installed if you’re not logged into it). If it had been a more common interaction, it could’ve really caused problems.
Google says it’ll update its Reddit comment when the Teams update is rolled out.
