Pixels are plagued by annoying problems after updating to Android 17. Games stutter and Wi-Fi drops out

It seems Google has never released a major Pixel update completely bug-free. Android 17 arrived in its stable version at the beginning of the month and immediately garnered two groups of complaints: disintegrating Wi-Fi and game stuttering. Neither is a new ailment, and that’s what’s a bit sad about it.

Wi-Fi that disappears every few minutes

A quick search on Reddit will reveal dozens of reports. For some, the connection disconnects “every few minutes”, while others experience more occasional dropouts, but the common denominator is clear — something went wrong in the network part with Android 17. Pixels were already plagued by a similar Wi-Fi and Bluetooth issue at the beginning of the year, so it’s more a return of an old bogeyman than a new problem.

Even games that shouldn’t stutter are stuttering

The second group of complaints concerns game performance. The catch is that it’s not just demanding titles suffering — users are reporting stuttering even in Clash Royale or Brawl Stars, games that even significantly weaker hardware can run. This suggests software GPU throttling rather than an actual performance limit. Android Authority speculates about a connection with the latest Google Play System update, but this has not been confirmed.

Fairly, let’s add that the problem has by no means affected everyone. The author of the original text himself tried several games on his Pixel 10 and encountered no issues. And we don’t see similar problems on our Pixel 10a either. However, there are too many reports to simply dismiss them. If you’ve encountered these issues, restarting the app is often a solution; for Wi-Fi, forgetting and re-adding the network helps — but for a real fix, you’ll likely have to wait for the next patch.

Are you experiencing any issues after upgrading to Android 17, or is everything running flawlessly for you?

Source: 9to5Google