Google has launched its April Android security update and has upto 56 ‘functional updates’ with improvements in dialing support, handover from VoLTE to VoWi-Fi during emergency calls, anomaly detection metrics, micro video performance in Google Camera, opening specific apps, decoding of certain video stream, fingerprint and keyboard latency in certain situations, etc. and in addition some dedicated improvements for the Pixel-series one of them being battery performance optimization. The new update is available in the form of OTA ZIP files and OTA (over-the-air) update.
The update for the month of April is only offered for few devices, which are the Nexus 5X, Nexus 6P, Pixel, Pixel XL, Pixel 2, Pixel 2 XL as well as the Pixel C tablet and is available in two different patch update levels – one is dated April 1, 2018, and the other is dated April 5, 2018 with both the levels addressing separate system-level issues where the first patch is for Google’s hardware partners and the second one is for the smart phone as above mentioned. The update is supposed to make the Pixel-2 quicker in its operation with the update consuming up to 70 MB of the phone memory.
The Security patch levels dated 5th April, 2018 or later will address all the issues associated with the 05-04-2018 security patch level and all previous patch levels.
You can also check Google’s website which has a full log on having all the details about what’s in store. This has been encouraged too all Google customers to accept in an official bulletin released on source.android.com regarding the Pixel and Nexus security updates for the month of April, 2018. With a wide cluster of functional updates this month the updating of the system patch definitely seems like a viable option for Google Android users which will include:
- Fixes for functionality issues on Pixel devices which are not related to security and
- Security patches for the media framework, system kernel components, Qualcomm components and framework.
The April security patch for the Nexus and Pixel devices is rolling out over-the-air and If you no update notification has been received yet, it can be accessed manually by in Settings > System > System update menu. But if that still doesn’t seem to work, it can be installed manually by grabbing either Factory Images or OTA Files from links found online. The files can also be installed through its unlocked bootloader.