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

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.

I can confirm that my Pixel 4a 5G running last month’s Android 13 release was prompted to update to today’s Android 12-based beta. Taking one for the team, I downloaded and installed this new version, which weighed in at nearly 2GB in size, just to see what would happen. After nearly an hour of app optimization, I finally hit the restart button and hoped for the best.

Unfortunately — and unsurprisingly — my phone reacted about as well as you’d expect from a software rollback. After rebooting and hitting the lock screen, my Pixel immediately flashed a rebooting message, after which it cycled through boot two more times. Finally, it redirected me to Android’s recovery mode, where I was informed my data might be corrupted, along with the option to start a factory reset.

Here’s the good news: after resetting my phone, it seems like it’s fine — no bugs, crashes, or reboots. Of course, my device was wiped in the process, although considering I use this particular Pixel for beta testing anyway, no actual data was lost. However, that won’t be the case for everyone, so if you’re running on Android 13 DP1, make sure you do not update to today’s QPR3 release if prompted. It will bootloop your phone, and you will need to wipe it to get it back to working order.

As for my Pixel 4a 5G, it’s now running Android 12 after a brief excursion to this year’s upcoming release. So, I guess in some way, this “update” did exactly what it was meant to do — I’m just not sure Google wanted this software release out in the wild. Hopefully, Google will halt the rollout for A13DP1 devices before anyone else is forced to wipe their phone.

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