Google is great with software but not with software support. It promises three years of software support for its Pixel phones. While that’s better than some, it’s still behind the likes of Samsung. It’s also lightyears behind Apple. Since the Pixel 3 officially lost support, the writing has been on the wall for the Pixel 3a phones for a while.
Google just dropped the Pixel 3a phones from the beta program
In case you aren’t familiar with this phone, the Pixel 3a was the midrange variant in the Pixel 3 series of phones. It launched back in 2019, and it brought a smaller footprint, a less powerful processor, but the same amazing camera as the Pixel 3 phones. It launched several months after the Pixel 3 and 3 XL, so it’s been supported for just a bit longer than the Pixel 3 phones. Now, that support is coming to a close with this newest announcement from Google. Google made a post on Reddit detailing the latest Quarterly Platform Release (QPR) that it sent out. The Pixel 3a was involved with this one, but this will be the last. The post says that the Pixel 3a and 3a XL will receive a public release of Android 12L within the next 24 hours. This means that it will no longer be involved in the prolonged beta program. This is a bummer for those who have been using this phone to test out the software.
This makes us worried about Android 13
The Pixel 3a is a special phone because it’s the first “A” series phone. This is the first mid-cycle Pixel phone that Google released, so we don’t know what Google plans on doing with it when it comes to Android 13. We wonder if Google will drop this phone completely before that platform update That fact that Google is dropping it from the beta program already does seem a bit worrying. It came out at a later date, so it’d make sense that Google would give it another platform update. On the other hand, however, it launched with Android 9 out of the box, so a fourth platform update seems out of the question.
