How Good is the Pixel 6 January Update?

The January update on your Pixel 6 or Pixel 6 Pro probably just finished up its marathon “optimizing” session and you are still trying to figure out what Google fixed or changed after two months of not seeing an update, but we still want to know how things are going. After all, this almost-2-month-gap in updates took the Pixel 6 line from beloved Google redeemer to unveiling an army of big mad “I’m buying an iPhone!” guys. This update is kind of important.

In the update, Google has attempted to fix 100 or so bugs, some critical. There are battery and charging improvements, additional fingerprint reader improvements, several camera adjustments, Adaptive Brightness response time increases, improvements to Quick Tap, fixes for always-on display not turning on, and 20+ things related to the user interface of Android 12. They also tried to fix poor network connections and performance, WiFi drops, and that emergency calling bug.

On top of the fixes, this is a Pixel Feature Drop too! There isn’t much new in this drop, but Google did improve Now Playing in two ways, there’s a new Snapchat Quick Tap shortcut, and the UWB in the Pixel 6 Pro can now be used by a tiny group of people.

I’ve been mostly using a regular Pixel 6 since the January update dropped and all seems to be good for now. Performance is still good in general, but yeah, the fingerprint is and will always be buns. Battery life seems quite solid at the moment, even during this short testing period. I’ll do some network testing here in a bit.

What about you – how has your Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro experience been since you grabbed the update yesterday?