After a Google engineer announced in September that the ‘Check for Update’ button would actually start pulling down updates for Pixel and Nexus devices as soon as they were announced there was much rejoicing. Unfortunately that hasn’t worked as seen by Pixel/Nexus owners after this latest Android update, now that same engineer has updated to say it was working, but has broken and will be fixed.
Having the latest update isn’t always beneficial, it’s why companies and carriers conduct staged rollouts – i.e 1% on day one, 5% on day two etc. – when rolled out in this manner, it’s easier to note and resolve issues before the wider audience receives the update. But, the majority of Nexus and Pixel owners basically just want the update, so Google was going to let us have the update – until something got broken.
The explanation is basically that a Google Play Services update broke the functionality, and while it’s been fixed on Google’s end, the fix won’t be rolled out to users until next year. Elliot Hughes, the Googler behind the original G+ post, updated his post to say :
If it were just an issue with Play Services it would be easy to just update that app, which sits in Google Play, but as it isn’t coming till next year it seems it isn’t just that. Google began rolling out many fixes for supported Pixel and Nexus devices in their monthly security updates last month, so it’s likely that it’s going to be included in the January update.
So, while you may have to wait a while to get your Over The Air (OTA) update to Android 8.1, it will come when Google is ready, you just have to wait a little longer for it. You can of course sideload it using the OTA files that Google has made available, or perform a full flash of the full 8.1 image to your supported Nexus or Pixel device, again using the files Google provided – either way, the world will go on on Android 8.0. Still, it’d be nice to get that fix for the Pixel 2 that reboots it when the Kernel panics.
