How can I make the keypad appear during a phone call?

Question

I recently noticed that, during a phone call, the dial "keypad" does not appear. This is particularly a problem when retrieving voicemail, because without the keypad, I can't give the command to play messages, delete, etc.

I am running Android 8.1.0 on a Nexus 6P device. The built-in Phone app is version 42.0.28425632.

I access voicemail using the built-in Phone app. When dialing phone calls, the keypad appears, and I can dial the target number with no problem. During the call, there is a screen with icons labelled: Mute, Keypad, Speaker, Add call, and Hold. The Keypad icon is highlighted with a grey circle, but there is no keypad visible. If I tap the Keypad icon, the highlighting disappears, and no keypad appears. If I tap the Keypad icon again, the highlighting reappears, and still no keypad appears.

How can I repair my settings or my phone app so that the dialing keypad appears during calls?

Answer 1

This is a known bug. See Google Dialer bug breaks the dialpad during calls. That’s a problem

You would need to wait for a fix or from app settings, roll back the updates to the app

Answer 2

This seems to be a known bug in the Phone app. It is tracked as issue 145767690 on the Android issue tracker. It is reported as broken on Phone App versions 42.0.281997267, and 42.0.284275632, but fixed on Phone App version 42.0.285321512 released on 13. December, 2019.

On 25. December, 2019, the Android team replied to this issue:

We have tested the issue on version Android 8.1.0 and App version 42.0.285321512 using devices Nexus 6P & Nexus 5X but we are unable to reproduce the issue.

I am the question asker, and I was experiencing this problem. Uninstalling the latest Phone app reverted to the factory Phone app. This worked around the problem for me. Installing the latest Phone app from the Google Store on 29. December, 2019 gave me version 42.0.285321512. This app no longer has the problem. It displays a keypad during the call.