Fairphone brings Android 13 to older smartphones with new beta update

Fairphone has announced that its third-generation smartphones will soon move from Android 11 to Android 13 builds, skipping Android 12 entirely. While the Dutch social enterprise has not revealed a specific release date for the delivery of stable Android 13 updates to the Fairphone 3 or Fairphone 3 Plus, both should receive the OS update by the end of June 2023.

For reference, the Fairphone 3 arrived in 2019 with Android 9.0 Pie, whereas Fairphone released the Fairphone 3 Plus with Android 10. Now, the company has opened an Android 13 beta program for both smartphones. Fairphone stresses that Qualcomm has stopped supporting the Snapdragon 632 that powers the Fairphone 3 series. Instead, the company maintains software support for both models directly.

Additionally, Fairphone promises to supply software support for the Fairphone 3 series until August 2024. However, it hopes to provide support for a further two years, which would be a first for an Android OEM. Fairphone equips its smartphones with an AOSP stock Android experience. Hence, it will look more like the version of Android that Sony offers for its Xperia smartphones than their Google Pixel counterparts. Still, Android 13 will deliver numerous changes from Android 13 on the Fairphone 3 series, including a Material You design language overhaul.

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