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To be clear - this doesn't mean that you can no longer install apps on Android 2.1 and lower, just that you can't use Android Market/Google Play. It's pretty ea

by barbs 9y ago

To be clear - this doesn't mean that you can no longer install apps on Android 2.1 and lower, just that you can't use Android Market/Google Play. It's pretty easy to sideload APKs, and the development tools still provide for Android 2.1 and lower. Of course, you lose the convenience and relative malware protection that Google Play offers, but if ease-of-use and/or security are primary concerns you shouldn't be using a 7.5 year-old operating system anyway. Also, they don't show versions lower than 2.3 on this graph, but I think it's fair to assume that the user share for 2.1 is far lower than 2.3's 0.8% https://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html https://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html. In short, this isn't a big problem at all.

cesarb 9y ago
> Also, they don't show versions lower than 2.3 on this graph, but I think it's fair to assume that the user share for 2.1 is far lower than 2.3's 0.8% https://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html https://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html. The graph legend says they don't show versions with user share lower than 0.1%, so one could infer that the user share for 2.1 is <0.1%, but they also say that this graph only shows "devices that visited the Google Play Store in the prior 7 days". Devices which haven't connected to Google's servers recently (for instance, because they don't have an Internet connection) aren't counted. And while the development tools still allow developers to target older releases, there were large API changes in Android 3 and 4 (these were the versions which added tablet support), so developers often will target only API level 14 (Android 4) and above.
joshumax 9y ago
Shoot, now my calculator won't get any more cool apps... https://youtu.be/Skbuc_pQj9g https://youtu.be/Skbuc_pQj9g
walrus01 9y ago
Two years ago, cheap $50 smartphones with 3.5" screens running on generic MediaTek chipsets sold in West Africa were based on Android 4.0 or 4.2 depending on the device. I wouldn't worry too much about the market share of devices older than 4.0 at this point.

by barbs 9y ago

cesarb 9y ago

> Also, they don't show versions lower than 2.3 on this graph, but I think it's fair to assume that the user share for 2.1 is far lower than 2.3's 0.8% https://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html https://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html. The graph legend says they don't show versions with user share lower than 0.1%, so one could infer that the user share for 2.1 is <0.1%, but they also say that this graph only shows "devices that visited the Google Play Store in the prior 7 days". Devices which haven't connected to Google's servers recently (for instance, because they don't have an Internet connection) aren't counted. And while the development tools still allow developers to target older releases, there were large API changes in Android 3 and 4 (these were the versions which added tablet support), so developers often will target only API level 14 (Android 4) and above.

joshumax 9y ago

Shoot, now my calculator won't get any more cool apps... https://youtu.be/Skbuc_pQj9g https://youtu.be/Skbuc_pQj9g

walrus01 9y ago

Two years ago, cheap $50 smartphones with 3.5" screens running on generic MediaTek chipsets sold in West Africa were based on Android 4.0 or 4.2 depending on the device. I wouldn't worry too much about the market share of devices older than 4.0 at this point.