It's not good. This affects only apps that have been abandoned for various reasons, such as dead developers, now defunct companies, developers that lost interest etc. There are tons of still very useful apps and of course tens of games that I already lost access to when I bought my S23, and now this means even more apps and games (and this list will only get larger with every new update)
There is no reason to artificially break new apps. Could you imagine if Windows 11 could run only software made in the last 5 years? It would be a nightmare. After all, no new apps can be uploaded to Play store if they don't target a very recent version
One example is JointPics, a really great app that doesn’t seem to have any replacement. It’s made for joining multiple pictures together, with all the proper scaling options, resolution limiting and output quality settings.
It still works just fine. It does have a border as it’s not made for phones with aspect ratio wider than 16:9, but that doesn’t limit its use.
Oh, and Android is also used on some embedded devices which may need to use outdated software. Thankfully it can still be installed via adb, so it shouldn’t be a big deal. At least until Android drops 32 bit app support.
You seem to be misinformed about what’s actually happening here. If there is a super old app you need you can still install it via adb.
This has absolutely nothing to do with the play store and its requirements. This is about preventing malware (which is typically written to target super old API levels to exploit things that weren’t patched yet) from being installed unknowingly by the user.
The design here is good. If you are tech savvy enough to use adb you can install anything you want. But this protects somebody that mistakenly thinks they are installing something safe from accidentally infecting their device.
This also means I cannot find any old app/game on play store. So even with adb (which I do not think is a good solution because it excludes 99,9% of the users, not only tech-savvy users want or need older apps) I can only install apps I know of and that I can find their apk on the internet. I cannot browse the play store for them. I cannot search for something I need, because I will never find them. And if it is a paid app/game? Well, tough luck, I have to go find a cracked apk in shady marketplaces.... So much so for security.
If they really do this for security, it could have been a switch in the developer settings or anything like that. Not a hard ban on older apps
most normal people have no idea how to activate the developer settings. And chances are, it's these people that are exploited the most by this type of malware
Again, this has literally nothing to do with the play store. This is API 22 and below we are talking about here… you can’t even find apps that target API levels below 30 on the play store today afaik lol.
Keep in mind this isn’t the minimum supported version, it’s the target/compile version which is typically pretty trivial to update. 99.9% of users in 2024 will never need to install an app that targets a version of Android released 10 years ago.
Here is an extremely useful app for Athens' transportation system with no other similar, and I can't use it because "it is old". Last app update in 2014 with a target of 5.1 iirc
If we go to Games, we can find hundreds of great older games that we lost access to for no reason. And as I said before but you skipped it, we now lose access to ALL of our bought apps and games that stopped updating for whatever reason...
Currently, existing apps (across mobile, Android Auto, Android TV) must target API level 31 or above by August 31, 2023 (target API 30 or up API level 33 for Wear OS). Otherwise, they will stop being discoverable to all Google Play users whose devices run Android OS versions newer than your app’s target API level, as your app wasn’t built to meet the safety and quality standard that these users expect from newer Android OS versions.
Apps with a target level of Android 11 (API level 30)* or lower will not be available to new users running the Android OS higher than apps’ target API after August 31, 2023.
Apps with a target level of Android 10 (API level 29) or lower have not been available to new users running the Android OS higher than apps’ target API after November 1, 2022, or May 1, 2023, if your app had an extension.
I use an ancient guitar tuner app called Pitch Lab. Tiny, no ads. It’s great. If they don’t kill it this round it feels like it will be soon.
Anyone have a suggestion for a replacement?
What’s next?
So far this is how I view all the updates done:
Last good version of Android: 7
Last acceptable version of Android: 13
Linux mobile distributions are probably not yet fully usable and I don’t see another alternative. Perhaps it will get better than Android and iOS just due to them getting worse. I wish Nokia kept it going with phones like N900.
Explain? Android 14 is just Android 13+, they actually fixed stuff like the wifi and bluetooth toggle acting the same.
I didnt touch Google Android in years, so Google Android for sure the last tolerable has to be around 9.
But using GrapheneOS or something else, Android is very very nice. It just always works, is fully FOSS, extremely secure etc. When my Linux Laptop crashes, I will always have my phone as backup.
I had a feeling you’d say that. It’s really not on the same level as all, but I think that’s more about me than the keyboard itself, as I’m just used to tapping in a vague area rather than have to focus on being more precise.
I’m glad the adb flag is still an option, I had to use it to install the app for my ebike wheel which is the only way to adjust the assist level / Regen brake strength. Maybe eventually I’ll try rewriting the app but I just don’t have time.
So with adb I should still be able to install old apps? Also is there a way to back up my apps without root, since there’s been some old apps that stopped showing up even for ones I bought when I tried to download them on newer phones.
Until someone with a better way responds, you can copy files to your PC with the adb pull command. Here adb is a terminal command you run on your PC. App data files are mostly in /data/data/packagename on the phone.
Yep they give the command in the article but to install an APK, all you have to do is plug into a computer that has the APK downloaded and use adb install --bypass-low-target-sdk-block appname.apk
I used it on android 14 and it looks like it’ll also work on 15