Technically they're not installed, those are just shortcuts to install them. The issue isn't really one of backward compatibility but software design and funct

Technically they're not installed, those are just shortcuts to install them. The issue isn't really one of backward compatibility but software design and function. As far as I know, Android maintains API compatibility all the way back to API v1. A simple app, like the calculator, written in API v1 should run on the latest Oreo device. An app requires a remote service to function must maintain compatibility with that service to function. The trouble is compatibility updates and feature updates aren't delivered separately. So you can't avoid new features if a service compatibility prevents your old version of the app from functioning.