What you need to know
- Google has announced that the Android 14 QPR1 Beta will commence next week.
- This comes as a bit of a surprise, considering that the final version of Android 14 is not yet available.
- It's unknown what new features may arrive in the QPR1 Beta, but we expect this to be released sometime in December 2023.
We're almost halfway through September, and we're still missing out on the stable release of Android 14. But that's not stopping Google, as the company's official Reddit account confirmed that the Android 14 QPR1 Beta "will kick off the week of September 18th."
Unfortunately, this Reddit post doesn't reveal anything about what could possibly be in the pipeline for Android 14 QPR1. Instead, it's serving more as a "warning" to let users know that if they want to leave the Android Beta Program, now's their time to do so:
"Opt out of the program before September 18th, ignore/don’t apply the downgrade OTA update, and wait for the final public stable release of Android 14 (UP1A) coming soon."
For the uninitiated, "QPR" stands for Quarterly Platform Release, and this latest iteration is expected to arrive in December. Along with the standard "bug fixes and improvements to stability and performance," these updates tend to include new features that didn't make it to the final stable build of Android. With the Android 13 QPR1 release, Google implemented various tweaks to things, such as being able to remove the media player from the lock screen, along with adding a few different aesthetic changes to the OS.
According to the post on the r/android_beta subreddit, last week's Android 14 Beta 5.3 was the "final" patch to be released ahead of the stable version. However, the company stopped short of sharing exactly when the stable release will be made available to Pixel owners. There's been much speculation that Google is holding off until the Pixel 8 series is unveiled in early October.
But this warning from Google definitely suggests that the stable version of Android 14 could come as soon as Monday, September 18. So, unless you want to stick around on the beta train, we recommend opting out of the Android 14 Beta Program now. This way, you won't have to worry about wiping your device's data and will just be able to install the stable build of Android 14 whenever Google decides to ship it.
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