August 13th was a great day for Google and Pixel fans globally as the curtains finally opened on the Pixel 9 series. While the new Pixels bring pretty decent improvements and new AI features over the previous generation Pixels, one of the odd things about this launch is that unlike the Pixels that launch every year, the Pixel 9 series doesn't come with the latest Android version, i.e. , Android 15. Does this mean Google is already backtracking on its seven-year update promise? Let's shed some light on it.

Google's 7-year update announcement came during the launch of the Pixel 8 series, and it took the Android community by storm. After all, beating Apple in the update game was a big deal. While most were happy with the announcement, some questioned whether Google would really keep its promise. This is because the company is not known to retain and fulfill them.

Fast forward a year, and Google may have started to backtrack on its promise. The Pixel 9 series comes with Android 14 out of the box instead of Android 15, which was extremely shocking for a new Pixel device. Now, before we get ahead of ourselves, there could have been many factors at play within the company internally. These could be reasons why Android 15 was not released alongside the Pixel 9 series.

But our counter question to this is that Android 15 Beta 4 was rolled out a month ago and had already reached platform stability. While the release timeline on the official website doesn't mention stable Android 15 release dates, new Pixels have always received the latest Android update a month or two after the last beta. Therefore, if Google had wanted, they could have released Android 15 along with the Pixel 9. But again, it's possible that they wanted to, but the stable builds weren't ready.