Hello everyone and welcome to the channel. Today Google released Android 16 QPR2 beta 1 that I have here on my 9 Pro XL and let me tell you that you will love this update. So let me show you what's new. Let's start with the build number and the update size here on the 9 Pro XL. The update size is 676 MGB and the build number is BP41.250725.006. 006. And this is the beta cycle for December 25 feature drop which is different from QPR1 which is expected to go live next month. And now let's take a look at the new features. Let's start with the lock screen as usual. And the most exciting change in this update is the lock screen widgets. All you need to do is to swipe left to get access to your lock screen widgets. And here is how it looks. This page has a grid size of three by one, which means you can only add three widgets per page.
If you want to customize your widgets, just tap and hold on any empty space and then unlock the phone and you will get the editing page. On the top left, you have the add widget button. But you can also do multiple things. First, you can reorder your widgets like this. You can adjust the size. But as you see here, I can only adjust the height, but the width has to be edge to edge. And if you want to remove any of these widgets, just highlight it and then tap on the remove button at the top left corner.
If you want to add any extra widgets to your lock screen, you can tap on the add widget button. And here it will show you the redesigned widgets picker, which I'm going to talk about in detail later in this video because it also matches the one we have for the home screen. So let's say I want to add multiple widgets to my lock screen like this. So here is the calendar and I will also add Google maps and once I start adding more than three widgets it will automatically create another page. As you see now I have multiple pages. Once you're happy with the changes tap on done and it will save your changes like this. But as you see it has some visual issues. Sometimes the widgets don't load properly, but it also fixes itself when you try it multiple times. And when you tap on any of these widgets, it will take you right away to the relevant app. When you use the lock screen widgets for the first time, you will get a floating card explaining how the feature works and I took a screenshot.
It says here to open an app using a widget, you will need to verify it's you. Also keep in mind that anyone can view them even when your device is locked. Some widgets may not have been intended for your lock screen and may be unsafe to add here. So let me explain what it means. If your phone is locked like this, if anyone swipe left, he will be able to see your information right away without the need to unlock the phone. The unlocking is only required when you take an action on any of these widgets. But for example, avoid to use something like keep notes widget because it will immediately give access to people to your notes.
So try to use things like Gemini calendar and stuff like that that only includes generic information. Google also added another feature to the lock screen widgets called hub mode which will give you access to your favorite widgets and screen savers while charging. And this is something you can adjust under settings and then display and touch. And when you scroll down a bit, you will see a new menu item called widgets on lock screen. From here, you can turn the feature on or off entirely. And also choose when to automatically show your lock screen widgets. When you go inside, you have multiple options. Either never, while charging, while upright and charging, or only trigger the action when you wirelessly charge the phone. So, let me show you a quick example. Here I have it set to while while charging. And here I have my normal lock screen.
And once I plug the charger, it will automatically swipe to the left to show me my lock screen widgets. So that's it with the lock screen. Now let's talk about the home screen. And the first change is related to the themed icons. What's new here is the system will automatically style the unsupported icons to make them closer to the supported ones, which is similar to what Apple does with iOS. Yes, it doesn't look the best, but it's certainly more consistent, and I would love to see this feature improving over time. The second change is the new remove option added to the app's shortcut menu. From here, you can immediately remove the app like this. instead of dragging it over to the drop target. And lastly, when you go to your home screen settings and scroll down, you will see a new toggle called landscape mode, which will allow you to view your home screen in landscape orientation.
But you need to avoid using this feature, at least for now, because shockingly it removed all my app icons and I have to reorder everything from scratch. Next, the wallpaper and the style app. The first change here is under the home screen settings. When you go to icons, you will see a redesigned page. Now, we have a floating card at the bottom with three different options. First, themed icons are now called minimal and the normal icons are called default. But there is a third option added here called create. Unfortunately, when I tap on it, it says app isn't installed.
And I tried to update all my Google apps but unfortunately the feature still doesn't work. And the second change is related to the wallpapers effects feature. So for example when I choose any of the wallpapers and then tap on effects now you will see some material U shapes showing on the screen while the feature is loading. 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 tech reviews app that you will find its Google Play Store download link in the description. And by the way, you can download any of these wallpapers locally on device if you want to apply Android 16 wallpaper effects on them. And now let's get back to the QPR2 beta 1. And now let's take a look at the redesigned widgets picker. And here I will do a side-by-side comparison with QPR1 beta 3.1 on the 9 Pro Fold to show you the difference between the two. The first change here is the new tabs design. So instead of having the suggested widgets in a horizontal carousel like before, now it got its own page which is called featured with a star icon next to it.
But if you want to navigate the rest of the widgets, that's when you need to tap on browse which also got its own list icon. And here you will see some visual tweaks as well. First, the drop-down arrow is now smaller and has a fill color around it. The search bar is thicker and also the widgets header at the top is fixed and no longer impacted by the scrolling unlike before. Also, when you expand any of these categories, you see a much better animation unlike the faster animation of the previous versions of Android 16. And finally, the scroll bar on the right is no longer available. Now, we are done with the widgets picker. And now, let's take a look at the new changes under settings. Starting with the network and the internet menu, now we have a new option called mobile network security.
And when you go inside from here, you can turn the 2G network protection on or off. Under notifications, when you scroll down a bit, you will see here that the dismiss notifications across Pixel devices is now called notification dismissal sync. But both work exactly the same. Under display and touch, we have most of the new changes which are also available on Android Canary. Like the ability to adjust your enhanced HDR brightness. Here you will see a sideby-side comparison so you can get an idea about how bright your HDR photos and videos will be based on your choice or you can turn off the feature entirely and view everything in SDR. Under the lock screen settings, you will see a new toggle to turn the widgets on lock screen feature on or off. But as I mentioned before, you will find the same toggle under the main display and touch settings, then widgets on lock screen, which will allow you to do the exact same thing. The dark theme feature also got updated to match Android Canary, and now you have the ability to choose between a standard and expanded.
expanded will force all apps and websites to be in dark theme even if they don't support the feature. The screen saver settings also got updated and here you will see a lot of new changes. First, the preview button is now located at the top right corner of the currently selected screen saver. The win to show menu is now located at the top instead of the bottom. And when you go inside, you will see a toggle to restrict to wireless charging. Also, the show additional information that shows the clock and weather info on the colors wallpaper is now working fine because when I tap on preview on this build, I can see the clock which never been the case before. And finally, we got a new toggle called low light mode. And the description says low light clock will show when your environment is dark. And this one will simply turn the clock into red to avoid any distractions while sleeping.
And the last change under display and touch is the auto rotate menu now looks different. Moving to the storage settings when you scroll all the way down you will see Android 16 is now called Android baklab under system and then language and region. Now we have the preferred languages front and center instead of tapping on this menu first to get the same feature. Back to the system menu. When you go to date and time and scroll down, you will see a toggle for the time zone change notification which will give you a notification once your time zone changes automatically.
And when you go to software updates, you will see that Google Play system update is October 2025 instead of June 2025. And the last change under settings is that digital wellbeing and the parental controls menu is now two separate menus. One for the digital well-being and the other one for the parental controls. And now let me show you some random tweaks here and there. And the first one is the 90 to10 aspect ratio, same as Android Canary. So you can make one of the apps as small as 10% of your screen and switch between them like this. And we also got the same haptic feedback when you adjust the size. The second change is the user's widget got updated and finally looks much better than before. So, let me add it to my home screen to show you how it looks. Now, as you see, you have a settings button that will immediately take you to the users settings page. Then you have the switch button which will automatically switch to the other account if you have multiple ones. Then you have the plus button if you want to create a new user.
And your profile picture is showing over here. And now let's end this video by talking about my experience with this update. While filming the video, I did a Geekbench score and I got 4,314 for the multi-core and 1,926 for the single core, which is much better than the numbers I got with QPR1 beta 3.1. I used to have very low numbers with this build, but it seems like QPR2 beta 1 did solve this problem. And when it comes to my actual experience with the performance, the phone is running as a smooth as expected as if I'm using a stable version. No major problems and the temperature of the phone is very low. No problems with the thermal management as well. I only came across a couple of issues. As I mentioned previously, the lock screen widgets sometimes don't render properly and once I activated the landscape option under the home screen settings, all my icons disappeared. Other than this, the phone is running as good as expected. And that's my experience with the 9 Pro XL.
Battery wise, I didn't have enough time to test it, but so far it looks normal to me. So, that's pretty much it for today. These are all the new changes I wanted to show you in Android 16 QPR2 beta 1. 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.
