Google ends the week with Android 17 QPR1 Beta 8 release

The weekend is practically here, and that means many of us are getting a long-overdue chance to unwind. Maybe you decompress with some gardening, or enjoying an artistic pursuit. But for a very special type of smartphone enthusiast, there’s probably nothing more fun to spend a weekend doing than checking out a new, in-development Android build. If that’s the way your nerd flag flies, we’ve got some great news to share, as Google releases Android 17 QPR1 Beta 8.

Here’s what Google identifies as the major fixes present in Beta 8:

• An audio framework buffer management issue that caused unexpected, loud audio corruption and static during media playback and notification interactions. (Issue #509007703, Issue #508456570, Issue #512158576, Issue #514265107, Issue #520904833, Issue #519636478, Issue #517242741, Issue #519578674, Issue #519191172, Issue #507873728, Issue #519418933, Issue #517194839, Issue #516440003, Issue #514606256, Issue #514047990, Issue #513681197, Issue #512813456, Issue #512212036, Issue #500342049, Issue #498147587, Issue #505780177, Issue #523640480, Issue #524719397, Issue #523304213, Issue #531669961, Issue #534620345, Issue #536625907, Issue #536292570, Issue #538400224, Issue #541204384, Issue #541243460, Issue #541257484)
• An issue where the Pixel Tablet Speaker Dock would frequently go offline or fail to connect when attached. (Issue #530716719)
• An NFC service regression that causes affected NFC tags to fail to read data or open URLs. (Issue #523935317)
• An issue where fingerprint authentication is not triggered when attempting to unlock the device. (Issue #523276531, Issue #526923270)

Based on the ridiculous number of citations attached to that audio framework bug, this one sounds like a particularly big issue for Google to finally sort out.

Like we noted with the last QPR1 Beta, Google is basically just sweeping things up at this point, and while that means you’re not going to be seeing much new, it’s still a great way to get an early preview of the September Feature Drop.