It seems that whoever’s in charge of quality assurance for Google’s Pixel 2 handsets might be in trouble. Now we have been hearing quite a few reports of the Pixel 2 handsets being shipped out to customers with various hardware and software issues, but we reckon this might have just taken the cake.
According to a few Pixel 2 XL customers, it looks like they’ve been receiving their units of the handset without the operating system installed. Essentially they are getting the phone but they are unable to use it because as you can see in the photo above, someone at the factory forgot to install the OS for the handset, or at least failed to install it properly giving them that error message.
This is according to various posts on Reddit and on ArsTechnica’s forum in which a few customers have complained about the issue. The URL provided in the error message also doesn’t really do much to address the problem either. At the moment the best solution is to send in the phone and get a replacement, which means that there will be a few more days of waiting.
Android Police points out that it is possible that users could choose to flash a factory image onto the handset, although they also note that the phone could have other problems that could cause complications during the installation process, so we reckon your best bet is to just send it back in. In the meantime Google has confirmed the issue and that it has already been “fixed”.