When it comes right down to it, there’s a pretty short list of things everybody simply expects a cell phone to be able to do well: making and receiving calls and text messages. We must be able to trust that our phones aren’t failing at the most basic types of communication. Unfortunately, some people have found that the Nexus 5 can’t always be trusted to let them know when somebody is calling or texting them.

Symptoms

There aren’t a lot of variations in the complaints for this one. At seemingly random times, the Nexus 5 will simply cease to respond to incoming calls or text messages. The connectivity indicators in the status bar and quick settings panel will show bars and data will continue to flow normally. In fact, there are absolutely zero outward signs that anything has gone wrong.

To complicate things further, the problem rights itself as soon as the Nexus 5 is used to make a call or send a text. Once connectivity is restored, the overdue SMS messages and voicemails will come flooding in.

Since Wi-Fi and cellular data are typically unaffected (in most complaints), Google Voice users are often alerted to a voicemail without ever receiving a call. This is how many people first realized something was wrong.

Who Is Affected?

As far as the complaints go, this appears to be specific to the Nexus 5. Some similar reports have popped up regarding the Nexus 4, but most of them look more like an older Bug Watch where the handset dropped all communication with the cell tower.

There also seems to be no specific connection to carriers either. The majority of complaints seem to come from Sprint and T-Mobile customers, but almost every recognizable carrier across North America and Europe has been named in one forum or another. Strangely, AT&T was hardly mentioned.

Possible Causes

The specific triggers for this bug are pretty tough to pin down. There seem to be 3 common elements to most stories:

LTE is enabled

WiFi is enabled and connected