Android 17 QPR1 was released for Pixels on September 15. It has a regression in the Pixel kernel driver tree causing stuttering, lag and outright freezes under memory pressure. It impacts GrapheneOS too since we updated the firmware/drivers but we fixed it for our release today.
Google is taking increasingly long to implement and ship fixes for major issues in Android. We're having to expand our workload to include handling basic updates, testing and quality control for the entire operating system. We have rapidly growing resources and we'll handle it.
Pixel 11 series received a bug fix release near the start of September 2026 with the 2026-09-01 patch level. That update wasn't Android 17 QPR1 and also doesn't include the September 2026 Pixel firmware/driver security patches. Perhaps they noticed this issue and cancelled it.
Standard Android and Pixel updates have a severe issue with delays. It usually takes 2-3 months for Google to ship fixes for both severe regressions and security issues. They often get the issues fixed in days but the release engineering and testing process is completely broken.
Major Android releases including Android 17 QPR1 go through a long public testing period. It typically takes Google at least around 4 to 6 weeks to ship fixes for even the most severe issues. They either cancel the release (Pixel 11) or ship a broken release (everything else).
Here's our fix for the awful Android 17 QPR1 regression causing lag, stuttering and freezes:
https://gitlab.com/grapheneos/kernel_pixel_6.6/-/commit/ed5a9b87d99b45618fa55b3d6b53094cbd784b9f
It's so severe that it's causing processes to be killed for stalls. It's unclear when Google will ship a fix for the issue. December 2026 wouldn't be a surprise.
Due to this major Android 17 QPR1 regression, we've been looking into reducing memory usage. We found a way to eliminate most extra memory use from our secure spawning feature without any significant downsides. We'll try to get that huge improvement shipped before November 2026.