Can anyone ever catch Pixel?
When Samsung launched its new Galaxy S25, Google was right there in the next seat, proudly joining hands with Android’s leading OEM to launch the world’s leading AI smartphone. But Google also has a phone of its own. And Pixel’s latest update shows just how impossible it is for Samsung or any other OEM to catch its unassailable lead.
Google likes wearing two hats — it clearly likes it a lot. With Chrome, it simultaneously plays the roles of privacy gatekeeper and world’s most valuable data-mining marketing machine. With Search, its “you scratch my back” deal with Apple’s Safari crosses the Android/iPhone divide in all kinds of ways. And with Android its dual role of OS-developer and OEM competitor is contortional to say the least.
We have seen this in recent months with Android 15. The OS itself and each feature-by-key-feature came first to Pixel. The much larger Samsung user base is still waiting. And now with Android 16’s beta — again first to Pixel, as will be its full release. And we see that same choreography play out each month with critical security updates.
This week, Google released February’s Android monthly security update with a raft of high-severity fixes and one that has been actively exploited in the wild, likely by forensic “spyware” apps which operate by way of a cable plugged into the phone. There was also a critical Qualcomm update. All of this will come to Pixels quickly.
Write-up by write-up of February’s releases made the point that Pixels will be updated straight away, while other users need to wait for their OEM to bespoke and package the update and then roll it out. Samsung, by way of example, will take the whole month to deploy across its user base, and some key fixes may be rolled over into March. This one month delay has been a consistent challenge.
While Pixel and Samsung compete, it’s more a frenemy relationship than ever before. Not that this is much comfort for a Samsung users waiting weeks for an update. But the real competitor is Apple. Its tight end-to-end control over its software and hardware ecosystem is the benchmark by which others will be judged. And the reality is that of all Android’s OEMs, only Google with its Pixel can come anywhere close.
Updating Android phones in general is a mess. It’s opaque for users with no clarity on when they will see updates until their OEM pushes out a release. Pixel users are closer to the mothership and can gauge with more certainty what will happen. For Samsung and others to catch Apple this needs to be resolved. There has to be a better way.
Samsung didn’t include details of Android’s February zero-day in its monthly security bulletin, suggesting it’s not in the release. But we have seen urgent patches go out before without being included in the usual documentation. I’d like to see a more joined-up effort to ensure that all users of the OS have the same updates at the same time. Not that I think there’s any chance of this happening anytime soon — if ever.
And that’s why catching Google’s Pixel when it comes to Google’s updates is proving to be an impossibility for more than 90% of Android’s user base.