Thread · HN Continuity

It definitely impacts the stock Pixel OS and many users are complaining about it. Here are a bunch of user reports:

<a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/GooglePixel/comments/1wvnj9c/lags_on_google_pixel_8/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/GooglePixel/comments/1wvnj9c/lags_o...

<a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/GooglePixel/comments/1wtxm0m/pixel_8_slowed_down/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/GooglePixel/comments/1wtxm0m/pixel_...

<a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/GooglePixel/comments/1wu9j93/is_there_any_chance_google_will_address/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/GooglePixel/comments/1wu9j93/is_the...

<a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/GooglePixel/comments/1wt0od2/new_update_is_really_slowing_my_9a_down_anyone/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/GooglePixel/comments/1wt0od2/new_up...

<a href="https://support.google.com/pixelphone/thread/470741051/september-update-android-17-made-my-pixel-laggy-and-notifications-won-t-show-in-the-shade?hl=en" rel="nofollow">https://support.google.com/pixelphone/thread/470741051/septe...

<a href="https://support.google.com/pixelphone/thread/470915661/phone-running-slowly-after-the-september-update?hl=en" rel="nofollow">https://support.google.com/pixelphone/thread/470915661/phone...

<a href="https://support.google.com/pixelphone/thread/470545577/major-pixel-9-pro-issues-starting-9-23?hl=en" rel="nofollow">https://support.google.com/pixelphone/thread/470545577/major...

<a href="https://support.google.com/pixelphone/thread/470645986/laggy-and-frozen-after-september-update?hl=en" rel="nofollow">https://support.google.com/pixelphone/thread/470645986/laggy...

<a href="https://support.google.com/pixelphone/thread/470478102/phone-became-noticeably-laggy-after-the-september?hl=en" rel="nofollow">https://support.google.com/pixelphone/thread/470478102/phone...

<a href="https://support.google.com/pixelphone/thread/470472092/pixel-6a-lagging-after-september-2026-update?hl=en" rel="nofollow">https://support.google.com/pixelphone/thread/470472092/pixel...

Here are some news articles which are primarily about this issue:

<a href="https://www.droid-life.com/2026/09/22/latest-pixel-update-either-greatest-ever-or-buggiest-ever/" rel="nofollow">https://www.droid-life.com/2026/09/22/latest-pixel-update-ei...

<a href="https://www.androidpolice.com/google-pixel-september-update-issues/" rel="nofollow">https://www.androidpolice.com/google-pixel-september-update-...

<a href="https://www.androidauthority.com/android-17-qpr1-issues-survey-3717366/" rel="nofollow">https://www.androidauthority.com/android-17-qpr1-issues-surv...

There are also new Wi-Fi compatibility issues covered in those news articles. However, it's fairly likely that's caused by fixing security vulnerabilities which caused routers with a buggy implementation of the protocols to become incompatible. It's something we've seen happening regularly with Wi-Fi and especially Bluetooth. Older Bluetooth devices not receiving updates are increasingly becoming incompatible with smartphones receiving proper security updates. Android only lists a tiny portion of driver and firmware patches in the Android Security Bulletins so OEMs aren't obligated to ship the patches and non-Pixel devices largely aren't shipping most of it so they don't experience as many incompatibilities. Pixels get more Wi-Fi and Bluetooth incompatibilities due to actually getting the security updates for those. Other devices may eventually get it many months or even over a year later after many routers get updated and sometimes workarounds are implemented on the client side.

We're not going to complain about Google fixing security vulnerabilities requiring a break in compatibility, but they announced that's what they're doing if it's the cause and provided a per-network toggle to work around it. Wi-Fi authenticated encryption often isn't particularly important since nearly everything has authenticated transport encryption and people can also use a VPN to avoid revealing their connections to local networks. A compatibility toggle with a security warning would make sense. The same applies to a lesser extent to Bluetooth.

It's also worth noting there are a bunch of unpatched upstream kernel vulnerabilities in the Pixel OS with publicly available exploits on GitHub and elsewhere. A bunch of companies selling exploit tools are actively using those vulnerabilities to exploit Pixels. Google isn't doing much about it since their release engineering process is so slow combined with the Generic Kernel Image (GKI) system entirely collapsing under the weight of AI accelerated vulnerability discovery. We're having to pick up the pieces from the mess created by GKI by doing painful merges of the upstream updates for the short term and then outright replacing it with directly using the upstream kernels for the long term. Android works with the upstream kernel releases but the drivers for devices are written against the GKI interface. We need to port a minimal GKI interface to the upstream kernels and update the drivers to handle dropping the ABI stability it provides.