What Android version do i need to run phone apps?
April 9, 2018 10:40 AM Subscribe
What is the oldest iteration of Android phone OS on which most apps will work? Both big (facebook, google earth) and small (tourist apps like 'a guide to town X' and 'Natural Park X: the walking trails').
Particularly walking and tourist apps, which were probably coded once by one person, or are updated by one person only and nearly always only work on Android. I'm in the UK but i don't think that makes a difference. (Stingy person seeks cheap smartphone: old phones only take old Android but are very cheap.)
Particularly walking and tourist apps, which were probably coded once by one person, or are updated by one person only and nearly always only work on Android. I'm in the UK but i don't think that makes a difference. (Stingy person seeks cheap smartphone: old phones only take old Android but are very cheap.)
USAian here, I don't know if mobile phone carriers work any differently in the UK. But in my experience, the Android phones that carriers basically "give away" for free (with a two-year contract) are always quite usable in spite of being a couple of models behind the current year -- newer/up-to-date apps may not always work, but the Android app store allows you to download earlier versions that will work on your hardware/software.
Reiterating what inner_frustration says above about security; depending on your phone vendor and network carrier, you may or may not see security updates rolled out to your device in a timely manner (or at all), but this applies almost as much to brand-new Androids as to older models. The smart thing to do is to limit your permissions on apps where you can, and avoid non-password protected public wi-fi unless you absolutely know where the signal is coming from.
posted by Strange Interlude at 11:03 AM on April 9, 2018 [1 favorite]
Reiterating what inner_frustration says above about security; depending on your phone vendor and network carrier, you may or may not see security updates rolled out to your device in a timely manner (or at all), but this applies almost as much to brand-new Androids as to older models. The smart thing to do is to limit your permissions on apps where you can, and avoid non-password protected public wi-fi unless you absolutely know where the signal is coming from.
posted by Strange Interlude at 11:03 AM on April 9, 2018 [1 favorite]
2 years ago I bought a cheap "Moto E" phone running kitkat. I still use it on a fairly regular basis and (aside from memory limitations ) nothing has failed to run on it. The phone does not have much memory (2GB internal) so sometimes I've had to uninstall some apps to make room for others.
As others have said, you probably don't need to put up with such an old android version to get a good deal on an android phone but it probably would work.
posted by metadave at 12:08 PM on April 9, 2018 [2 favorites]
As others have said, you probably don't need to put up with such an old android version to get a good deal on an android phone but it probably would work.
posted by metadave at 12:08 PM on April 9, 2018 [2 favorites]
I am on 4.4.3, which wikipedia tells me is KitKat.
I have never run into anything that won't install, though I do not play games, so they might be more demanding.
Some apps definitely do run sluggish on the older hardware, but web browsing/yelp-like things/transit apps have all worked fine.
posted by madajb at 12:25 PM on April 9, 2018 [1 favorite]
I have never run into anything that won't install, though I do not play games, so they might be more demanding.
Some apps definitely do run sluggish on the older hardware, but web browsing/yelp-like things/transit apps have all worked fine.
posted by madajb at 12:25 PM on April 9, 2018 [1 favorite]
Depending on your geek skill levels you may be able to run a custom ROM, it's not necessarily as difficult as you may think if you head down a well established path. This is being typed on a 5 year old S3 running android 7, which is working great. Old flagship phones can be good candidates.
posted by deadwax at 7:17 PM on April 9, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by deadwax at 7:17 PM on April 9, 2018 [1 favorite]
Ignoring security concerns, KitKat runs most stuff these days, but I recently had to bump an old device up to Lollipop as some developers of apps we regularly use were dropping KitKat. Looking back, they were all financial apps, if that tells you anything.
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 6:16 AM on April 10, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 6:16 AM on April 10, 2018 [1 favorite]
I have a tablet that still runs most apps on kitkat (plex appears to be the only difficulty - I've found a version that works, but it appears I can never again update it). Be aware that part of the reason with android why so many apps run on an older OS is Google Play Services is an auto updating service that can't be stopped (without rooting your phone) and which handles a lot of stuff under the hood. And be aware that sometimes changes to google Play Services will break things that previously worked on an old phone.
I.E. my moto G (yes, no numbers). I've actually got it running a reasonable recent version of LineageOS, however at some point google Play Services introduced a change to their Body Sensors category which broke the ability of many Huawei phones, and at least the Moto G from pairing to it. There were enough Huawei devices out there that Garmin introduced a firmware update that got around this breakage, but there wasn't/isn't a fix for the moto G.
Even better is since Play Services updates on it's own, and I rarely update my apps (because I usually hate UI changes that might be introduced and am more likely to notice new ads or broken issues than bugs fixed), just out of the blue my watch and phone stopped pairing, making me at first think my watch was broken since bluetooth was still working on my phone for other devices. I was able to uninstall the updates to Play Services, and prevent it from auto-updating because I rooted my phone (there's many instructions online for this), but if you have an old phone which isn't rootable (I've got a Marshmallow tablet that has't been rooted and doesn't even have fastboot capability), even if you don't update apps things might magically start breaking on you.
So in short, if you want to run an old android version and have it mostly work - make sure it's rootable, and I'd advise preventing google play services and your apps from auto updating.
posted by nobeagle at 6:37 AM on April 10, 2018
I.E. my moto G (yes, no numbers). I've actually got it running a reasonable recent version of LineageOS, however at some point google Play Services introduced a change to their Body Sensors category which broke the ability of many Huawei phones, and at least the Moto G from pairing to it. There were enough Huawei devices out there that Garmin introduced a firmware update that got around this breakage, but there wasn't/isn't a fix for the moto G.
Even better is since Play Services updates on it's own, and I rarely update my apps (because I usually hate UI changes that might be introduced and am more likely to notice new ads or broken issues than bugs fixed), just out of the blue my watch and phone stopped pairing, making me at first think my watch was broken since bluetooth was still working on my phone for other devices. I was able to uninstall the updates to Play Services, and prevent it from auto-updating because I rooted my phone (there's many instructions online for this), but if you have an old phone which isn't rootable (I've got a Marshmallow tablet that has't been rooted and doesn't even have fastboot capability), even if you don't update apps things might magically start breaking on you.
So in short, if you want to run an old android version and have it mostly work - make sure it's rootable, and I'd advise preventing google play services and your apps from auto updating.
posted by nobeagle at 6:37 AM on April 10, 2018
Some apps will also "serve" older versions of their app via the playstore, but you will not be able to get updates for their new versions. The place I work does this, but we only support back to Lollipop now.
As a developer it's a nightmare to make sure apps can work on super old OS'es, so don't expect to have the latest and greatest app features.
posted by theRussian at 8:31 AM on April 12, 2018 [1 favorite]
As a developer it's a nightmare to make sure apps can work on super old OS'es, so don't expect to have the latest and greatest app features.
posted by theRussian at 8:31 AM on April 12, 2018 [1 favorite]
This thread is closed to new comments.
Also be aware that technically, older unsupported versions of Android are not secure. While it's a matter of debate as to how unsecure, and it's certainly not as bad as the PC world where using unsupported versions of Windows is generally a very bad idea, it is something you should take into consideration.
I'm from the UK too, and you don't have to go to crack converters to get a cheap phone. New phones running a modern version of Android can be had pretty cheap, so long as you don't mind them being a bit on the slower side, and having to put an SD card in to up the storage.
posted by inner_frustration at 10:53 AM on April 9, 2018 [2 favorites]