Android 17 QPR1 is the first release since Android Honeycomb (3.x) adding new APIs for app developers without a release to the Android Open Source Project. The new APIs are currently exclusive to the Pixel OS and aren't available to other Android OEMs.

https://developer.android.com/sdk/api_diff/37.1/changes

Non-Google Android OEMs and AOSP-based projects can ship yearly and QPR2 releases. There are also security backports to those releases. Security preview access is needed to ship patches without months of delay. We've had that since before our Motorola partnership via another OEM.

We already ported our code to Android 17 QPR1 since before it was released on September 15th but don't have permission to release it yet. We're working on backporting Pixel firmware, kernel drivers, userspace drivers and HALs from Android 17 QPR1 to Android 17 for now instead.

Pixel Update Bulletin for September 2026 has additional patches to standard Android platform components used by non-Pixel devices. These patches are relevant to non-Pixel devices but haven't been made available via the September 2026 Android Security Bulletin or preview patches.

Google should not be gatekeeping security patches to the standard Android platform code from Android OEMs but that's what they've started doing. Other OEMs will get these patches in December 2026 via Android 17 QPR2. We can ship them early by reverse engineering the code instead.

It would be interesting to know if Google's legal team is aware they're giving Pixels months of early access to new Android features and bug fixes including certain important security patches. Pixels being given this competitive edge over Google's OEM partners is very dubious.

Google is also once again failing to comply with our GPL source requests for weeks. We requested CD1A.260905.001.A1 sources on September 1st and were only provided access today. The kernel build IDs are the same for 17 QPR1 Beta 9 and 17 QPR1 so we have that already at least.

We could have shipped an Android 17 QPR1 update already since our port was completed. Instead, we have to deal with ongoing pain until Android 17 QPR2 is released in December 2026. This will not be an issue for Motorola since we'll have official firmware and driver code provided.

It will be far easier for us to support upcoming Motorola devices than Pixels. Qualcomm will hopefully expand MTE support beyond the highest end flagship SoC soon so we can expand to more than flagships. Pixel 11 didn't remove it from hardware, only firmware, so that's good news.

I can only hope that Graphene working with Moto will eventually lead to a fork of Android by Moto.

Of course I think that would require Moto absorbing Graphene first, as the Graphene team lacks the management/leadership capability (and the funding, legal teams, etc) to do this (no criticism of Graphene intended, it's just a huge thing to attempt, and Google will certainly attempt to "dissuade" such things).

Almost every non-Google Android device already runs a custom fork maintained by either the manufacturer or the operator, if not a third party.