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My understanding this is more of a Google thing. The play store will no longer offer new installations of software below a certain API level, even though they w
by kj4ips 3y ago
My understanding this is more of a Google thing. The play store will no longer offer new installations of software below a certain API level, even though they will work on current versions of Android.
I believe this is an attempt to enforce some of the permissions changes made around Marshmallow, I believe, where apps now request many permissions at time of use, and not at install. The compatibility layers are a bit 'ugly'.
An interesting side effect is that if you sideload an app that is in this state, Google Play will actually offer to keep it updated, even though it wouldn't allow installation initially.
- NeroVanbierv 3y agoActually, I did install the APK directly from Apkpure, but it didn't seem to do anything apart from loading the splash screen.
- saghm 3y agoMaybe the reason the app installation is prevented via the store is that whether it works or not is device-dependent, and Google decided that it preferred not letting people install it at all rather than allow people if they couldn't be sure it would work (or try to figure out which devices it would or wouldn't work on beforehand and then have to keep that data around)
- iggldiggl 3y ago> I believe this is an attempt to enforce some of the permissions changes made around Marshmallow That was a relatively major change, but there have been enough other changes since then, too, that they're trying to force developers to adopt – some of them "just" cause the hassle of adapting to the new APIs, some of them unfortunately definitively break some power user use cases without a suitable replacement.