Hello everyone and welcome to the channel and here's my follow-up video about Android 16 QPR2. This video is dedicated for the most hidden features in this update. Then I will cover the ongoing bugs, the bug fixes, and my experience with this build after using it for a few days. So without further ado, let's jump in. I collected some of the features mentioned in this video from an article by Meshar Rahman on Android authority. while others I spotted myself.
So, quick shout out to Mashar Rahman for putting everything together. And now, let's take a look at the new features. The first one is the return of the screen off fingerprint unlock feature. So, when you go to settings and then security and the privacy, and then go to device unlock, then choose the fingerprint and insert the pin code. When you scroll all the way down, you will see a new toggle called the screen off fingerprint unlock. When activated, even if your always on display is disabled, you still can touch the fingerprint sensor to unlock the phone like this. While previously always on display was a mandatory feature for this to happen.
The only downside of this feature is you have to rely on your muscle memory because there is nothing on the display to indicate the fingerprint sensor location. I think Google needs to add anything on the display to make it a little bit easier. The second change is also under settings. When you go to security and privacy and then device unlock and then theft protection. When you scroll down, you will see a new toggle called failed authentication lock. The description says your screen will lock after repeated failed authentication attempts in your apps and settings. Which means even if someone stole your device while it's unlocked, the device will lock itself back again after five failed attempts of biometric authentication either under settings or in your apps.
And one of the examples is the Wi-Fi sharing authentication. So if this one failed five times, the device will lock itself back again. The third change is the smoother pictureandpicture mode. As per Google, they refactored some of the underlying transitions to make it better. And I can certainly feel the difference because one of the things that used to bother me when I switched to the mini player and then go back to the home screen, the transition was really bad. But now it's a lot better than before.
And you can also feel better performance when you position it on the screen like this. Moving to the system photo picker, you will see a lot of improvements. Let me try to add a photo to show you how it looks. Now when you start to scrolling, you will see this handle on the side which will activate the data scrubber once you start scrolling. This is similar to the photos app, but the only difference is this one doesn't give you the same haptic feedback. The second change is in the search. Now you can see suggestions from Google photos. Plus you can use the voice search. Not only this, but when you go to collections, some of the categories are now labeled with these glyph icons. Like the people and pets has the Google photos icon.
From this device has the folders icon. And then we have a brand new category here called from your apps. When you go inside, it will classify the photos by app. The private space also got a brand new change. The install button is now called add. And when you tap on it, it gives you two options. The same old install apps option in addition to add files. This one will take you to your Google files. So you can copy or move files from your personal space to the private space which will make things easier. Side loading apps also got a small visual tweak. When you try to install an APK, you will see a better looking overlay card with bigger buttons. Also, when you tap on the update or install button, you will see the squiggly progress bar, which wasn't the case before.
And when I make a phone call and then mute the microphone, now I see an icon in the status bar, which wasn't the case before. And the same applies to the speaker. The only feature I'm still missing from this update is the notification organizer that will automatically categorize the silent notifications into bundles. And here is how it looks. As per Google's article, the feature is rolling out in stages and will be available in the coming weeks. However, we can take a sneak peek at the feature in this Android Authority article. It says that a new menu item called notification organizer should be under settings and then notifications. This page will allow you to choose what type of bundles to activate. For example, we have promotions, news, social, and suggested. You also have the ability to always expand the bundles in addition to choosing what apps to include.
On top of this, I finally got my hands on the notification summaries feature, which is part of November 2025 pixel drop that you can locate under settings, then notifications, then notification summaries. Here you have the toggle to turn the feature on or off in addition to choosing what chatting apps to include. And here's an example of the notification summaries feature in action. It has this AI star on the left to make it stand out. Then it's followed by the top highlights in the long message. Before jumping to the next chapter, if you like any of the wallpapers you see in this video or any of my previous videos, they are now available in the wallpapers by in-depth take reviews app. Plus, you have the ability to download any of these wallpapers locally on the device to apply the live effects of Android 16 on any of them. And that will make the wallpapers look even better. So, if you want to give it a try, you will find Google Play Store download link in the description.
And now, let's get back to Android 16 QPR2. The rest of the hidden features I'm going to show you are related to the desktop mode. To make sure the feature is activated on your phone, head over to settings, then about phone. Scroll all the way down and tap the build number seven times to enable the developer options. Then, search for the enable desktop experience features, which is the last one in the list. Once enabled, the phone will restart and then you are ready to use the desktop mode.
And the first change I'm going to show you here is the new dialogue box you get once you connect your phone to an external display. It will immediately ask you if you want to start the desktop mode or mirror the phone's display. And you have the ability not to show this dialogue box in the future. Plus, once the display connects successfully, when you go to the external display settings, you have the ability to tap on the default connection behavior. And in this case, you have three options. Either to show the dialogue box I just showed you or immediately start the desktop mode or mirror the built-in display.
So, you can adjust your default behavior from here. Now, the desktop mode is ready to show you all the new changes. And the most exciting one is the ability to use circle to search by longer pressing on the apps button like this and then highlight whatever you see on the screen. You will get a floating card with all the information you need like the AI overview, the visual matches and you can ask whatever you want exactly the same way as your phone. And here is how you can close the search. So having a feature like this is definitely a great addition to the desktop mode. The second change is located under settings. then connected devices, then external display and you will see a new toggle called universal cursor. Once activated, it will give you the option to order the displays. Here you have your phone that you can place on either side or you can make it a vertical orientation like this.
Plus, you have the ability to choose the angle where exactly you want the cursor to switch between the two displays. You can make it only at the corner, you can make it at the center, and so on and so forth. And the same applies to the horizontal orientation. We also got a lot of new features under the mouse and touchpad settings. But you need to connect an external touchpad or mouse to be able to see this menu which is located under system and then mouse.
The first one is the cursor acceleration. The description says faster movements with your mouse will move the cursor further and that means the travel distance of your mouse will be shorter. In addition to the ability to adjust the pointer speed, another new feature under this menu is called customize corner shortcuts. And here you can set each corner to trigger a certain action when you move the cursor at this spot. And here you have five different actions to choose from. I tried all the shortcuts and found that the recent apps to work really well with the desktop mode as shown now on the screen. The home option is broken and doesn't allow me to do anything. The notifications and the quick settings both trigger the action on the phone for some unknown reason. And finally, the lock screen just locks the phone screen and in return everything will be locked. I'm also happy to report that we finally got access to the notifications shade and the quick settings.
So instead of relying on your phone to do certain actions, now you get access to everything with all the functionalities you would expect from your phone with no compromises. Lastly, the performance of the desktop mode improved a lot. Especially when you move the windows around like this. When you resize, everything works really, really well. As you see here, I can resize the windows easily. Also, when I start the split screen view, it works really well. As you see now on the screen and the window resizing is very responsive as well.
So, that's it with the desktop mode. Now let's talk about the bugs I spotted in the past few days. The first one is related to the media output switcher. You can see the delay when I expand it. Not only this, but when I expand the quick settings, the media controls are also misaligned. There are also a couple of issues related to the desktop mode. Once I unplug the external display, the phone glitches a lot and sometimes it gives me a black screen like this one. Sometimes it freezes and in other cases the widgets become a lot bigger. So I face a lot of UI issues after finishing the desktop mode session and I have to restart the device to overcome this issue. The second one is the haptic feedback I get on the phone when I do certain actions on the desktop mode.
So for example, when I scroll through the recent apps screen on the desktop mode, the phone vibrates or when I press the back button and so on and so forth, which doesn't make any sense. Another UI issue I spotted under settings. When I search for something like this, the highlight size doesn't match the menu item itself. Moving to the home app and home controls, I started to see a lot of issues recently. The first one, when I trigger the home controls from the lock screen, I get this weird UI issue.
It flashes on the screen and sometimes it shows the quick settings and notifications shade as you just saw. Then when I trigger it from the quick settings, I see the same weird flashing as well. And when it comes to the home screen widget, it's always broken and doesn't represent the current state of my lights. Now it says the lights are off. Tapping on it one more time doesn't do anything. I have to keep tapping on it to take the action. Plus, some of my devices stopped working all of a sudden. this device. When I tap on it, it says something went wrong even though I didn't change anything either when it comes to the light or the Google Home app.
So, these are all the bugs I came across in the past few days. Now, let's talk about the bug fixes. Google shared a very long list of bug fixes that I'm going to leave its link in the description because it doesn't make sense to go through all of them one by one in this video so you can check it yourself. Now, let's end this video by talking about my experience with the performance, battery, and benchmark scores. The good news I have is the better 3D Mark score in the Wildlife Extreme test.
On the 31st of August, I got 2,924 with an average FPS of 17.5. While after QPR2, I got 3,256 with 19.5 FPS score. And when you take a look here at the temperature, it averages between 30 to 32, while previously the temperature was between 36 and 37. And when it comes to Geekbench 6, the results are very minor. No major difference. I got 6,179 for the multi-core and 2,31 for the single core, which is about the same numbers I got in October and September. No major difference. When it comes to the GPU, I have 3,885, which is about the same as November numbers. Putting the benchmarks aside, I started to notice a much better performance from the 10 Pro XL after installing QPR2 update. I usually use Android Auto while driving and sometimes with the wireless charger enabled at the same time. And previously, both used to make the 10 Pro XL a lot hotter than normal. But with QPR2 update, things are a lot more under control. And when it comes to battery life, I'm still getting the same seven to eight hours of screen on time. So far, I didn't notice any major difference, but I will keep you posted in my future videos.
So, that's pretty much it for today. That was my follow-up video about Android 16 QPR2. Please let me know in the comments if I missed anything. But for now, thanks so much for watching and see you in the next.
