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PSA: Don't update your Pixel to today's Feature Drop beta if it's running Android 13 DP1
Unless you're gunning for bootloops, that is
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Google has a surprise beta update rolling out to currently supported Pixel phones — well, most of them, anyway — that presents a preview of what's to come in June's Feature Drop. Unfortunately, it seems like this continuation of Android 12's beta program is also coming to devices running Android 13 DP1. If you see an update to QPR3 pop up on Google's latest developer preview, we highly suggest you avoid taking the plunge.
Google thinks it has solved the mystery of the cursed bootlooping wallpaper
Color space isn't the culprit — luminance is
Over the last week, a photo has been making the rounds at venues like Reddit and Twitter. It's an attractive mountain lake with the sun rising (or setting) through the dense clouds. Perfect for a phone's wallpaper, right? Not unless you like bootloops. Certain aspects of the image trigger an inescapable, repeating crash in Android's system UI, and most recent Android phones are likely susceptible, including Samsung phones and Google's Pixels. Thankfully, both Samsung and Google are aware of the issue and looking into a fix.
Following a recent update to the Zenfone 6, some owners have been reporting system stability problems including frequent crashes/restarts, network connectivity problems, and bootloops. According to a recent statement issued by an ASUS representative on the company's ZenTalk forums (spotted by PiunikaWeb), the issue is a hardware fault in affected devices which is triggered by the update.
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- Following these reports, the Android team has paused the OTA rollout of the Android Q Beta 4 to investigate the issue. I hadn't had the time to update my Pixel 2 XL yesterday and, sure enough, checking for updates now returns nothing to install. Thanks, Armando, Brenden!
Android Q Beta 4 came out earlier today, and though there don't seem to be as many new things as with prior Beta releases, it's nice to have notification swiping as God intended and the rotation lock button back. However, it's not all good news; some people are reporting issues with bootlooping when attempting to update to Q Beta 4, primarily those with Pixel 2 XLs.
Slow and delayed updates are nothing new for Android devices, but T-Mobile and Samsung seem to be having more issues than usual. Back in April, T-Mobile had to halt the Note 8's Oreo update for several weeks, but it turns out the Galaxy S9 and S9+ had some botched updates of their own. The carrier paused an update in April, and it hasn't restarted more than a month later.
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If there's one thing sure to ruin your day, it's a crashing smartphone. Even worse if the bug proves so bad that your phone eventually insists you do a factory reset, losing data in the process. This is exactly the situation that has befallen a number of Nexus and Pixel owners in recent days, and it's all to do with an adaptive icon bug that was discovered by the developer of third-party Facebook wrapper called Swipe.
The last generation of Nexuses (Nexus? Nexsi?) were unfortunately plagued with hardware problems. The Nexus 6P suffered from early shutdowns due to a faulty battery sensors, and the 5X had the famous bootloop bug (which my own 5X eventually fell victim to). The 6P suffered from bootloops as well, to an extent, but now there's a possible fix for the problem on both phones.
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- The attorneys involved would like our readers to know that if you have been affected by a bootloop with one of the above LG phones, you can contact them here if you might be interested in joining the suit.
Representatives from Girard Gibbs LLP, the firm previously handling one of the LG bootloop lawsuits, contacted us late yesterday with news about the case. On June 29th the court gave an order granting the defendant's motion to compel arbitration, dismissing the lawsuit. That means that right now the suit has been forced into arbitration.
Back in March, we learned that Google may be working on a third device for 2017, called 'Taimen' (Google traditionally names products after fish). This third model would be bigger than the next Pixel and Pixel XL, codenamed 'Walleye' and 'Muskie' respectively. It's not known for sure that Taimen will be a larger Pixel phone, just that it will be larger in size than Walleye and Muskie.
The Nexus 6P lawsuit we previously reported on twice in April has been recently amended, and the venue of the suit seems to have changed to northern California. The latest filings have expanded the total number of actions in the suit from 10 to 23, with claimants hailing from 11 different states. It's still early days, and this more recent filing doesn't mean that the case has advanced, merely that the attorneys involved have decided to expand and tweak things after the initial filing. Those who are participating in the suit have a long way to go.
The Android hardware space is fast beginning to look like a watered down episode of Suits. Following on from news earlier in the week that LG is facing a bootloop lawsuit regarding several of its phones, Huawei's Nexus 6P could be responsible for Google encountering a similar inconvenience. As well as being accused of the same bootloop problem that has blighted LG devices, there are reports from consumers that the Nexus 6P has a premature battery shutdown problem.
LG's bootloop problems have become the butt of the joke online over the past few months. While Samsung was busy cooling down the fire of its Note7 fiasco, LG was getting heat over its freezing LG G4 and V10, among other devices (like the Nexus 5 and 5X). Many reports were surfacing of these phones getting stuck in a bootloop vicious circle, turning on and off, not properly booting, and leaving the owners without any recourse but to ask for a replacement unit... if they were still under warranty.
The most recent over-the-air update for the Nexus 9, the one that totally wasn't what you were actually waiting for, has apparently bricked the device for some owners. A couple folks affected by this 5.0.2 issue have taken to Google's product forums to ask what gives.
The OnePlus One has had its share of bugs, but there has been one issue that effectively breaks the phone without the owner being even accidentally at fault. One minute you're swiping through the app drawer looking at the best way to kill time for a couple of minutes, the next you're hit with a spontaneous reboot and staring at a phone that boot loops indefinitely, leaving you with a bricked device.
Glass XE16.1 Update Soft Bricks Some Devices, Google Halts Update And Begins Work On A Fix [Update: Fix Is Rolling Out Now]
Glass XE16.1's latest update is bricking some Google devices.
It was just last week that the Google Glass team started pushing out eagerly awaited update to XE16. It was followed less than 24 hours later by a silent hotfix dubbed XRE15C. Unfortunately, these updates left many Glass owners with complaints about stability and an even shorter battery life than the device was already known for. Yesterday, in a bid to resolve some of these issues, the team began rolling out a new update to XE16.1. There still hasn't been an announcement or changelog regarding the new firmware, but several users have already identified a pretty severe problem: it's sending their devices into perpetual boot loops, leaving them effectively soft bricked.
When we leaked the official ROM and radio image for the HTC Thunderbolt's Gingerbread update last week, users were understandably excited. An official Sense, Gingerbread ROM was probably highest on the list of demands for Thunderbolt users (aside from better battery life, perhaps).