Fiarphone 3 and Fairphone 3+ get Android 13, support window might expand to 2026

2023-07-11

Last week the Fairphone 4, originally launched in Europe back in 2021, finally made it to the US, although in an altered software form, "de-Googled" as they say.

Today the sustainable smartphone company is in the news again, this time related to its previous models, the Fairphone 3, which was released in 2019, and the Fairphone 3+ from 2020 . Fairphone says it couldn"t deliver Android 12 to these devices because the chipset manufacturer (Qualcomm) didn"t support that for the Snapdragon 632 inside.

So, Fairphone"s "amazing internal team" has now taken over software support for the device and delivered Android 13 for both models, skipping Android 12 altogether. Fairphone"s goal is to support each of its phones for at least five years after launch, which means the Fairphone 3"s window expires next year.

That said, the software team is now "aiming" to actually add two extra years of support to the Fairphone 3, thus taking the last update into 2026. That would be quite a feat for the modular device, and great news for its owners undoubtedly, provided they haven"t already switched to something that isn"t powered by the Snapdragon 632 SoC.