Google just released Android 17 QPR2 Beta 1 for Pixel and with it, two Pixels, the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro, have reached the end of their lives.
In the release notes, Google posted, it confirmed this:
Pixel 6 and 6Pro users will not be getting this OTA since the device will reach End of Life and Android 17 QPR1 beta series will be the last for these devices.
Android 17 QPR1 is expected to be part of the September Pixel Feature Drop, which puts the official end of support for the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro very close to their previously expected expiration date in October.
Phones have been supported longer than expected
The phones have already outlived Google’s initial promises about them. The year of their release, 2021, Google upped the number of years that Pixels would receive OS and security updates, at three years and five years, respectively.
Nevertheless, Google gave the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro two additional years. So the phones have been living on borrowed time for quite a while.
Frozen features and security risks
The Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro won’t stop working at the end of September. They’ll just be frozen at the latest Android 17 build.
But while you might not miss having the latest features on your Pixel, there is risk in using it because it also won’t receive any security updates.
What’s included in Android 17 QPR2 Beta 1
Along with the announcement about the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pros came, of course, news about the top fixes that came along with the update.
They include:
- Bluetooth re-pairing fails silently following a remote bond loss. (Issue #412524057)
- Media player controls briefly flashed on the lock screen upon waking the device despite the app’s notifications being disabled. (Issue #484607701)
- A system crash causing Pixel devices to unexpectedly reboot when invoking Gemini. (Issue #505750489)
- Initiating a drag-and-drop gesture with multiple fingers caused the source application to stop receiving subsequent touch events. (Issue #516836306)
- An issue where notifications randomly became invisible in the notification shade until a system restart. (Issue #526139207, Issue #522657034)
- An issue causing ML-DSA key generation to fail with an exception when using the “NONE” string digest instead of the class constant. (Issue #525612735)
- An issue in AccessibilityNodeInfo.toString() where window bounds were incorrectly logged using screen bounds, which caused misleading accessibility debugging data. (Issue #520428442)
- Window-level UI blur effects failed to render and the “Allow window-level blurs” developer toggle reset after rebooting. (Issue #527376569)
