Google Pixel

Google Pixel updates will now come out when they’re ready instead of on specific dates

Ben Schoon | Oct 5 2023 - 7:06 am PT

For years now, Google has had a relatively regular schedule of releasing Pixel updates on predictable dates, but that schedule has seen lots of delays in recent years. This week, Google has confirmed that, starting with Pixel 8, updates for Pixel phones will just come out when they’re ready.

Generally speaking, Google launches new updates for Pixels according to one of a few schedules. Monthly security updates are supposed to arrive on the first Monday of every month. Quarterly Feature Drops arrive, usually, in March, June, August (with a new version of Android), and December. The schedule has shifted from time to time, but that’s the general idea at least.

In a blog post diving into the new seven-year update commitment Google has made with Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro, the company also says it will stop sticking with a formal schedule for Pixel updates, and instead just release them whenever they are ready.

Google explains:

We also dug into how we can deliver the highest quality, best tested updates to Pixel users on a consistent basis. As part of this effort, our security updates, bug fixes and feature updates won’t roll out on a specific day each month. Instead, we’ll deploy updates as soon as they’ve completed the necessary tests to ensure they improve the experience for all Pixel customers.

Given the context of the blog post being solely about Pixel 8 series, it seems possible that this might only apply to those new devices, but it seems much more likely that this is Google’s new Pixel update philosophy as a whole.

What does this mean for the future?

The update cadence for Pixel phones will probably be relaxed, not in terms of frequency, but in terms of timing. And, that might not be a bad thing, but it’ll certainly be a mixed bag. On the one hand, it might mean that we see updates later if Google runs into delays (although, we’ve been seeing that already), but it could also mean that monthly updates occasionally arrive early, as it wasn’t uncommon for the whole “first Monday of the month” thing to push an update’s timeline back to the second week of the month.