If you’ve been struggling with getting proper Wi-Fi connectivity on your new Pixel 6, you’re not alone, but the good news is that Google knows about the problem and says a fix should be coming next month.
Over the past few weeks, we’ve been hearing sporadic reports from Pixel 6 owners dealing with both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth issues. These became more prevalent after installing this month’s security patch, although some folks were experiencing more minor networking issues even before that.
There’s a lengthy thread on Reddit where owners of the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro have been discussing the issue, with several suggested workarounds that only appear to resolve the problem temporarily, at best.
Fortunately, Google has offered an official response, acknowledging that it’s figured out the problem and determined that it “impacts a very small number of devices.”
“Of course, we realize this is a poor experience and immediately developed a software fix that will be available in the next Google Pixel Update, rolling out in March,” the Google rep added, who goes by the Reddit handle PixelCommunity, while recommending that users contact Google’s support team if they want to “explore other options in the meantime.”
This specific problem appears to result in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth automatically shutting off after locking a Pixel 6 device and then usually not coming back on at all — at least not without manual intervention. Some users have had limited success with restoring their devices back to factory settings, but the problem seems to eventually come back after only a few hours.
The original poster on Reddit also noted that the third beta of Android 12L may also include a fix for the problem, noting that they’ve been using it for several days “with zero issues” and that it otherwise “seems to be quite solid.”
Although we haven’t encountered this problem on our Pixel 6 devices, they do appear to have a unique difficulty connecting to WPA3-protected Wi-Fi 6 networks that we haven’t encountered on any other mobile devices we’ve used. This suggests that Google may still have a few other bugs to work out in its Wi-Fi implementation, and we’re hoping that the March update brings more stability overall.
