Call doesn't start on Firefox [Moto G Pure, Android 12]

[rosscado]

sourcefull1 reports an issue with microphone acquisition/VAD startup with Firefox on Android.

I get the green button, it turns blue when I touch it, but never glows red and turns back to green. I've checked through possible hindrances, allows and permissions. It prompts me for mic permission. I reinstalled Firefox, tried the beta. Same thing. 🤔

His device is a Moto G Pure, running Android 12.

[johncrawley]

I've been looking at this using a virtual device running on Android Studio. So far, I've been running a Pixel 8 Pro with Android 12, and have been unable to reproduce. Note that setting up a custom virtual device (to match screen dimensions) in Android Studio leaves the Google Play app uninstalled without extra config file editing.

Some thoughts so far:

• the issue might be hardware-specific
• the issue might be OS-specific, but is somehow not getting triggered by the virtual device
• the device is relatively new (2021), so performance should not be an issue
• I need to follow up with the reporter to see how often this can be reproduced
• are there workarounds, i.e. refreshing the page, repressing the call button after the first fail
• do our analytics pick up any microphone connection errors?
• since Firefox mobile has no visible developer console to average users, could we add an error alert or similar to provide information about such failures?

[rosscado]

Great suggestions, John! I recommend we modify our analytics to report microphone connection errors. I was going to suggest the user DM us his Javascript console log, but as you say, it's unavailable on mobile and would likely contain SPI anyway.

[rosscado]

I have added more robust error handling around microphone acquisition. When the application is unable to access the microphone device or create a MicVAD instance from it, rather than failing silently it will:

• reject the pending promise (acquireMicrophone service - AudioInputMachine.ts)
• log the error to the console
• display an appropriate user-friendly message to the user indicating what's gone wrong and what they can do, in their own language

I have not yet captured the error event in our analytics reporting system, as I think this might be sufficient, but it's something we could do relatively easily if necessary.