Fairphone 3 will get Android 13 and two extra years of OS updates until 2026

One of the key areas of improvement that phone manufacturers can really expand on in the following years is sustainability. Many have already begun to incorporate new ways of making their products more sustainable by creating longer-lasting hardware and software that is easier to repair and recycle. That being said, no company does this better than Fairphone.

If you haven't heard of Fairphone, it is a company that focuses on making sustainablephones that would last buyers as much as possible while still pleasant to use. There are numerous things Fairphone does to achieve this, with the one that is relevent to this story being long software support.

On the note of prolonged software support, though, the company recently announced that Android 13 is now available for Fairphone 3 and Fairphone 3+ owners (via AndroidCentral). Why is this impressive? Well, for starters, the Fairphone 3 launched in late 2019. That's so long ago that the phone came with Android 9.

What makes this case even more interesting is the fact that the latest Android version of the Fairphone 3 was running Android 11 until now. That's because the Snapdragon 632 chipset it has inside does not support any newer major Android software update. So how is this possible then/

Well, Fairphone had promised 5 years of software support when it released the Fairphone 3 and 3+, so the company will be taking over the device's software support in its own hands and bringing the latest version of Android 13 with all its new features and security fixes, while completely skipping Android 12 in the process.

But wait, there's more! In the comments below its Twitter post where Fairphone announced this news, the company says that these 5 years of software support after the phone's launch in 2019 will now be extended by 2 more in an effort to stay true to its longevity and sustainability core values. That means the Fairphone 3 and 3+ will be supported until 2026! Truly admirable and something all phone manufacturers should aim for.

When will Android 13 come to the Fairphone 4?

According to one of Fairphone's replies under its Andoird 13 announcement tweet, the Fairphone 4 which was recently launched in the U.S., will also be getting Android 13 by the end of 2023. We are used to seeing things go the other way around, with the software updates trickling down from the newer models to older ones, but it seems there is nothing standard about Fairphone.