Android 12 could launch in early October for Pixel phones

Google has hinted that Android 12 could land on Google Pixel phones as soon as October 4, with Android 12’s final beta development having landed on Pixel smartphones last week.

This, of course, prefaces another big upcoming launch from Google – that of the Google Pixel 6. Though neither has confirmed release dates, we did get a brief look at a new promo from Google for the Google Pixel 6.

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As reported by XDA Developers, Android 10, 11, and 12 will no longer be approved for software build-ups. To be clear: Android 12 could roll out from October 4 on Pixel devices, then eventually arriving on other devices.

According to the document uncovered by XDA's Mishaal Rahman, Google will (still unconfirmed) publish the source code for Android 12 from early October on Android Open Source Project (AOSP) Gerrit, which houses the information and source code needed to create custom variants of the Android OS.

It follows then that we could see the Pixel 6 and the Pixel 6 Pro arriving on or after October 4, since it would be remiss of Google to launch its flagship devices without onboarding Android 12. Google worked to a similar timeline last year, with the first publically stable version of Android 11 arriving on Pixel phones first.

Google is about to launch one of the biggest Android design shakeups in a long while, and there are a lot of changes to look forward to before it heads to some of our favorite and best phones.