More information: http://www.jma.go.jp/jma/jma-eng/satellite/news/himawari89/2...

Seems like this is the link that should have been used.

Most normal sites have trouble handling HN load and directly linking to such a ridiculously large image is punishing them for releasing it.

Maybe a mod can edit the link.

This issue also affects users of CyanogenMod 11 which is currently based on Android 4.4.4 (https://jira.cyanogenmod.org/browse/CYAN-5728). The same thing happened to the HTC One M7, but HTC fixed it quickly with an OTA update (http://venomroms.com/venomhub-fix-no-sound-calls-htc-one-m7). All in all it looks like the malfunction is caused by an automatic update of the Google Play Services framework. Not reacting at all so far is definitively not a good move of Google.

That MAY explain why I don't have these issues on my N4, I de-googled[1] my phone as soon as I got it.

[1]http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1715375

if it's a bug in a closed source Google service, how HTC released a fix? even if they roll back the service on a new system image it will self update... unless they hacked away and bumped the version...

The services probably just trigger an error deeper in the call stack like in Qualcomm's proprietary binary blobs. Perhaps they received a new version from Qualcomm.