Android 17 QPR1 is the first release since Android Honeycomb (3.x) adding new APIs for app developers without a release to the Android Open Source Project. The new APIs are currently exclusive to the Pixel OS and aren’t available to other Android OEMs.
https://developer.android.com/sdk/api_diff/37.1/changes
Non-Google Android OEMs and AOSP-based projects can ship yearly and QPR2 releases. There are also security backports to those releases. Security preview access is needed to ship patches without months of delay. We’ve had that since before our Motorola partnership via another OEM.
We already ported our code to Android 17 QPR1 since before it was released on September 15th but don’t have permission to release it yet. We’re working on backporting Pixel firmware, kernel drivers, userspace drivers and HALs from Android 17 QPR1 to Android 17 for now instead.
Pixel Update Bulletin for September 2026 has additional patches to standard Android platform components used by non-Pixel devices. These patches are relevant to non-Pixel devices but haven’t been made available via the September 2026 Android Security Bulletin or preview patches.
Google should not be gatekeeping security patches to the standard Android platform code from Android OEMs but that’s what they’ve started doing. Other OEMs will get these patches in December 2026 via Android 17 QPR2. We can ship them early by reverse engineering the code instead.
It would be interesting to know if Google’s legal team is aware they’re giving Pixels months of early access to new Android features and bug fixes including certain important security patches. Pixels being given this competitive edge over Google’s OEM partners is very dubious.
Google is also once again failing to comply with our GPL source requests for weeks. We requested CD1A.260905.001.A1 sources on September 1st and were only provided access today. The kernel build IDs are the same for 17 QPR1 Beta 9 and 17 QPR1 so we have that already at least.
We could have shipped an Android 17 QPR1 update already since our port was completed. Instead, we have to deal with ongoing pain until Android 17 QPR2 is released in December 2026. This will not be an issue for Motorola since we’ll have official firmware and driver code provided.
It will be far easier for us to support upcoming Motorola devices than Pixels. Qualcomm will hopefully expand MTE support beyond the highest end flagship SoC soon so we can expand to more than flagships. Pixel 11 didn’t remove it from hardware, only firmware, so that’s good news.
I’m not buying Pixels because they run Android. I’m buying them because they run GOS. My current devices should live long enough that it’s the last hardware I had to buy from Google.
The OpenAtom Foundation might have an opportunity here -non-profit behind OpenHarmony the basis for HarmonyOS and others-, at least in some parts of the world any ways.
And Android should have been moved to a foundation to be come a community project outside of Google.
It’s too bad GrapheneOS is so hellbent on pushing Android because this would be a great time to promote work on an Linux mobile distro, like PostmarketOS.
i maintain that the most sensible thing would be to develop a minimal linux “shim” that just runs an android VM, then you no longer have to develop ROMs for every specific device and you can start slowly porting features over to the linux side of the whole shebang.
How would that help exactly? /gen
As I understand it linux phones are most commonly android, but with a linux container layered ontop. Mainly because phone firmware is so incredibly hard to not only reverse engineer but even extract as a blob to work with any modifications. So your stuck maintaining separate ROMs just for the firmware, with minimal work involved to port ASOP itself
It’s always weird when a company starts to self-destruct.
Especially Google with Android. Closing off Android is baffling. Did they not learn anything from the last 30 years?
Well, let’s just say learning from history isn’t really where any corpos shines
You used to be able to customize your YouTube channel, upload background images and all sorts of things. Corpos don’t understand humanity.
All the Empire is rotten and its companies were left to feed on carrion, it isn’t just Alphabet.
