Today is the first Monday of the month, and that only means one thing: Google’s Android update. Just in time, the company released the April update for the Pixel smartphones that still support it, and for the first time the latest Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro are getting a monthly update at the same time as other phones. No more delays for the latest pixels.
Hopefully this is a good sign, which means that there will also be fewer bugs in the 6 and 6 Pro versions of the software, but that’s not clear yet. What is clear now is that this April update fixes a lot of high-risk vulnerabilities, and so you should install it as soon as it appears on your phone. However, this can take days (or even weeks), since that’s Google and Google likes to organize their rollouts to an extreme.
Aside from security fixes, the update also contains some other improvements for Pixels. Wireless charging performance “with some accessories” (unnamed) should be better, while the front camera preview will no longer appear magnified “in certain apps”, and the green screen that sometimes appeared in the camera preview also disappears. These only apply to Pixel 6 and 6 Pro.
The rest of the improvements are for all pixels that are still supported. Here’s what fixed: System UI crash while using apps in Picture-in-Picture mode; An issue that causes an error message to appear when setting a live wallpaper; An issue that causes the notification shade and quick settings to appear invisible after changing the wallpaper; An issue that sometimes incorrectly renders animations when canceling a search in the app drawer; An issue that sometimes prevents navigation in the overview screen while TalkBack is active; And an issue that would sometimes prevent the Recents button from showing the overview when using the three-button navigation with third-party launchers.
The new version number is specified as SP2A.220405.004 for Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro phones, and SP2A.220405.003 for all other devices.
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