Google unexpectedly drops first “Quarterly Public Release” Beta testing June’s Feature Drop

This week, Google pushed a Feature Drop to Pixel devices along with the Android version 12.1 update with the March security update. This completed Google’s beta testing cycle for Android 12L, but the beta program wasn’t over. Today, Google unexpectedly began pushing a new beta build for eligible Pixel devices.

Interestingly, however, Google has published a new page detailing Android 12 “QPR” (Quarterly Platform Release) Betas. This first build, referred to as “Android 12 QPR3 Beta 1”, lets participants test June’s feature drops, even before getting the most recent Feature Drop for March.

Android 12 QPR3 Beta 1 OTA notification on Google Pixel 6 Pro

The QPR3 Beta 1 build is available for Pixel 4, Pixel 4 XL, , Pixel 4a 5G, Pixel 5, Pixel 5a, Pixel 6, and Pixel 6 Pro. If the device is enrolled in the Android beta program, an OTA update should arrive to the eligible Pixel. Google has not yet officially announced this shift in its Beta program, so details – even from the QPR Beta page – are slim.

Now that Google has released a total of 10 Feature Drops, they have never previously been available to test on a beta build. With this new strategy, we presume that Google will release the next set of planned Feature Drop features in the Beta channel following the public release of the current ones. Given that June 2022 is the first Feature Drop available on Beta, we imagine that the September 2022 Drop will be available to test immediately following June’s Feature Drop release – thus starting a new cycle. This is speculation, as Google hasn’t officially confirmed a Beta release schedule for the new QPR builds.

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