Some Google Pixels received an Android 12 update instead of Android 13

It wouldn’t be a major Google software release if there wasn’t something that went wrong.

Google started pushing the stable Android 13 update to Pixel devices on August 15th, and already some users have encountered an issue. For some Pixel devices, the latest update is actually to Android 12, not version 13. Several reports have emerged on Twitter and the r/GooglePixel subreddit about users receiving a 2GB Android 12 update on their Pixel phone.

Per Android Police, some brave users took a risk and installed the mystery Android 12 update and claimed it simply re-installed the Android 12 update and seemingly didn’t bump the OS build number.

Refreshed the 'System Update' dialog on my Pixel 6 sporadically for an hour… only to get an available update for Android 12 which the device is already on?

— Ed Holloway-George ? (@Sp4ghettiCode) August 16, 2022

Other users noted they initially received the Android 13 upgrade but weren’t able to update right away. When they went back to download the new software a few hours later, the Android 12 update had replaced it. Moreover, some users who installed the Android 12 update were able to download the Android 13 update after.

Screenshot credit: u/fooldomus

Android Police notes the issues seems to primarily impact the Pixel 6, Pixel 4a and Pixel 5a (which isn’t available in Canada). Overall, the problem doesn’t seem that widespread, but it still impacted a bunch of Pixel users.

If you’re in the same boat with an Android 12 update on your Pixel, you might be able to trigger the Android 13 update by rebooting the device. If that doesn’t work, you’ll just need to wait for Google to fix the problem on its end unless you’re brave enough to redownload Android 12.

Source: Twitter, Reddit, (2) Via: Android Police