14 DAY TRIAL // Bad news for those who haven't yet switched to a newer smartphone, as Google has just confirmed it will end support for two of the oldest Android versions: Gingerbread and Honeycomb.
Although the number of users that still own devices powered by these Android OS versions is very small, Google has stated that the move will enable it to provide more robust support for other, newer iterations.
Considering Android 2.3 Gingerbread is about six years old, Google's announcement doesn't come as a surprise. One of the things that the search giant might have taken into account before making this decision is the small user bases these two platforms currently have.
According to the latest data from Google, Android 2.3 Gingerbread devices account for around 1.3% of all the Android devices available on the market.
The situation is even clearer when it comes with Android 3.0 Honeycomb, which accounts for less than 0.1%.
“The Gingerbread platform is almost six years old. Many Android developers have already discontinued support for Gingerbread in their apps. This helps them build better apps that make use of the newer capabilities of the Android platform.
For us, the situation is the same. By making this change, we will be able to provide a more robust collection of tools for Android developers with greater speed.”
Google has informed developers that support for Gingerbread and Honeycomb will be discontinued in Google Play Services.
The search giant notes that version 10.0.0 of the Google Play services client libraries, as well as the Firebase client libraries for Android, will be the last version of these libraries that support Android API level 9 (Android 2.3, Gingerbread).
Also, Google announced that the next scheduled release of these libraries, version 10.2.0, would increase the minimum supported API level from 9 to 14 (Android 4.0.1, Ice Cream Sandwich). However, this particular change won't happen until early 2017.