If you’ve been using Microsoft Teams for work-related communications but you have not updated your app to the latest version, Google encourages you to do so. It seems that a bug has affected the app, blocking emergency calls on Android devices. And while both Google and Microsoft are working on solving this issue, the former is reminding users of the app to “urgently update” to the latest version of Teams. While having an older version may not exactly be the root cause of the issue, it can be one of the reasons why this is happening.
Google sent an email to users that may have not yet updated their Microsoft Teams app. They say your current version may be preventing emergency calling to numbers like 911, 999, 112, etc, on Android devices when you are not logged into the app. This has been happening to some users due to an “unintended interaction” between the Microsoft Teams app and the Android OS. If you’ve updated the app after December 10, you should not have any issues although there are some users that may still be experiencing the problem.
Google recommends urgently updating Microsoft Teams on Android devices. pic.twitter.com/oVqtuaXjHp
— Edd Myerscough (@E_Myerscough) December 30, 2021
A lot of users have probably set their apps to automatically update to the latest version. But there are also those that have deactivated the automatic updates to save space on their smartphones. These are the ones receiving this email from Google so if you haven’t gotten one then it means your Teams app has updated to the version that has supposedly fixed the bug. Some users on Reddit have been complaining that their devices were freezing when calling emergency services.
Google was eventually able to trace this to a bug that blocked the calls when a user installed Microsoft Teams but have not logged into their account. This is of course something that should not happen so both Google and Microsoft are prioritizing fixing the issue, especially since this concerns emergency calling and may be a matter of life and death. They will also be providing an Android platform update this January that should take care of the connection between the app and the system.
If you haven’t updated your Microsoft Teams app for some time now, it might be a good time to do so now even if you’re not having any problem with contacting emergency services. Go to the Play Store or the app directly to update to the latest version.
