Not happy with the Android Q Beta on your Nokia 8.1? No problem! Now you can rollback to stable release manually.

Nokia Mobile has made available the Android Pie downgrade package for Nokia 8.1. So, now you can downgrade/rollback to Android Pie if you are not satisfied with the Android Q beta. Android Q is indeed a work-in-progress, and the features are not yet final. So, the current builds might be unfit for everyone who is not a developer.

A factory reset is required when you downgrade Android to an older version. Do back up all your essential data and apps before proceeding.

Steps to downgrade Nokia 8.1 from Android Q Beta to Pie

Downgrade via OTA

If you are on Android Q Beta 5, you can request an OTA update to downgrade your Nokia 8.1 from Android Q beta back to Android Pie. To do that, follow the steps below:

Go to the Nokia Developer website. Expand roll-back over the air section Go through the instructions and then click on Request roll-back OTA. Wait for the update notification to show up, install it, and reboot the device to return to Android Pie.

Manually downgrade

You need to follow mostly the same steps as you did while upgrading to Android Q beta.

Download the Android Q downgrade package from the Nokia Developer website.

Alternatively, you can download it from the mirror in OTA post. Reboot your Nokia 8.1 phone into recovery mode. Send the downgrade package to the phone using the ADB command: adb sideload file.zip Replace file.zip with the name of the downgrade package. You need to use the full path if the CMD or Powershell is opened in a different folder. Wait for the installation to finish. Reboot the phone when it completes.

You should be back to Android 9.0 with the latest April 2019 security patch.

Nokia will push more optimized and feature enriched Android Q builds in the future. You can update to Android Q beta again when you think that it is worth giving it another try.