Porting GrapheneOS to the Pixel 9a is now well under way. Pixel 9a is still using Android 15 QPR1 rather than Android 15 QPR2. We had to create a special branch for it based on taking our final Android 15 QPR1 release (2025030300) and rebasing it onto the Pixel 9a release tags.

Android 15 QPR2, 2nd quarterly release of Android 15, was released March 2025. Since Android 14 QPR2, quarterly releases are based off the development branch with as many changes as yearly releases. Many changes are behind feature flags and yearly releases enable far more flags.

Pixel 8a launched in mid May 2024 still using Android 14 QPR1 instead of Android 14 QPR2 released in March 2024. The device branch for the Pixel 8a went away the next month when Android 14 QPR3 was released. This year’s June release is Android 16 rather than Android 15 QPR3.

We’ve backported a subset of the changes since 2025030300 to our Pixel 9a device branch including an import sandboxed Google Play compatibility layer, a recent fix for an upstream update security issue and all of our changes to our Network Location and System Updater projects.

Strangely, Android delayed the April 2025 monthly update until Pixel 9a launch day (April 10th) despite the Pixel 9a not receiving it. The monthly update is for Android 15 QPR2. Pixel 9a has April 2025 and earlier security patches backported to an Android 15 QPR1 device branch.

Since the Android 15 QPR2 monthly update and Android 15 QPR1 release for the Pixel 9a were released together, the kernel tags for the monthly update were delayed all the way until today in the past hour since the Pixel 9a tags took so long to push. We’re dealing with that now.

To work around the monthly update for Android 15 QPR2 being delayed until Pixel 9a launch, we made a release based on April 2025 Android Security Bulletin backports on the day it came out (https://grapheneos.org/releases#2025040700). Android Security Bulletins are partial backports to old versions.

Android Security Bulletins are most of the High and Critical severity patches backported to older releases of Android including Android 15 without the monthly/quarterly updates. They’re not the full Android security patches, just the subset required for OEMs to set a patch level.

Android Security Bulletins often contain backports of patches already shipped in earlier months. Various patches in the April 2025 Android security bulletin were already shipped by Android 15 QPR2 in March. The new Android release each month is a separate thing from the bulletin.