According to Google, owners of Pixel 3a and 3a XL can look forward to a final update
Pixel 3a is one of the best received phones in the history of Google. Readers and reviewers loved it and the larger Pixel 3a XL for delivering a great software experience and camera at a great price. Unfortunately for the many remaining owners, the midfielders of the 2019 era have been officially left behind. Google’s three-year update promise will be pumpkin this month, marking the end of software updates – with one exception. Google tells us that a final update is scheduled to land in July.
Earlier today, the Pixel 3a series received its last explicitly guaranteed update. When a Google Spokesman was asked for a comment regarding the expiring software commitment for the Pixel 3a series, a Google Spokesman provided Android Police with the following statement:
“In May 2019, at the launch of the Pixel 3a and Pixel 3a XL, we announced that the devices would receive three years of software updates and three years of security updates from the time our devices first became available in the Google Store. The final update for the Pixel 3a and The Pixel 3a XL will be released to users in July 2022. “
This is not unusual; this is actually the format that Google typically follows for obsolete devices now. When the standard three-year software update obligation ends for flagship pixels, the fall dates usually (and unfortunately) coincide very closely with the Android release schedule, meaning they are left behind, just as a new release lands. Pixels get the same promise of security fixes as OS updates, which means they’ll be updated to a whole new version, basically when support ends.
It’s a perfect storm for error, so Google is making a final termination update in about two months after the software update window finishes and provides a lot of final fixes for the new issues after they have had a little extra time to cook. And that’s what has been promised: the Pixel 3a series will get one last bug fix “before July 2022,” Google tells us. It knew that language technically mean any time between now and the end of July, but it more likely means a final update at the expected time in early July – or it has it for obsolete units so far.
A short life for some of our favorite phones.
A final update two months after the end of software support has been standard for Pixels for a while. The only strange thing is that Pixel 3a was released in the spring, not in the fall, like all Pixels before it was. If history is an indicator, the final update will run the current quarterly platform release (Android 12 QPR2), a then-dated security patch level from May 2022, and it will not get most of the upcoming changes in June feature loss – finally think bug fixes , not new features.
This marks the end of an era for the Pixel 3a and 3a XL, two of the most beloved phones among the Android Police staff. They were not the fastest phone you could get in 2019, and they did not have the largest or smoothest screens, wireless charging, quite a lot of RAM / storage space or even IP ratings, but they were a incredible value here in the US, where we do not often benefit from the kind of insanely cheap phones that some other markets have. 3a was so good that it won our 2019 Most Wanted award for smartphone of the year. Android Police’s Jules Wang recently called it “the living legacy of Google’s phone line”, and many have compared the A-Series and its first entry to the reborn Nexus line. And now there are only a few months between Pixel 3a and software obsolescence.
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