Nexus 6 owners had cause to rejoice a few days ago when Android 7.1.1 finally hit the beastly phone. It sat on 7.0 for quite a bit after its younger brethren received the update. However, now it seems that the celebration has come to a slight hiccup. It appears that the Shamu is suffering from a speakerphone echo bug. Yikes.

By just taking a look through the Google forums or the AOSP Issue Tracker, you will find that a lot of other users are experiencing a nearly identical problem. On a speakerphone call, the other person will hear an echo, squealing, or some other ghastly noise that is not conducive to an effective conversation. The issue probably stems from the mic. The sound from the speakerphone is likely feeding into it and thus the person on the other line hears themselves. Muting the mic fixes it... but that really is not useful.

Some users flashed back to the 7.0 build and the issue disappeared — returning to 7.1.1 brought it back. Others tried to downgrade the phone app, which did not help. As of yesterday, Google has acknowledged the issue and passed it to the development team (Issue Tracker, response #19). Hopefully, a fix will come soon.