You are using an older version of MATLAB that evaluates the truth of the comparison expression (creating a logical) before it calls solve()
Alternately, you might have assignments to a, b, c, and x before the solve() call, and if those assignments are all numeric values then the "symbolness" of the variables would be over-written, leaving a*x^2 + b*x + c as being a numeric variable, whose numeric value would be compared to 0 and that result passed to solve()