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Google is making a change to the minimum level of support for Android devices out there in the wild, dropping Ice Cream Sandwich from the mix.
Google has confirmed that it is shifting focus from Ice Cream Sandwich as the baseline level of support, and moving things up one level to Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, or API level 16. That means that app updates that support Ice Cream Sandwich are going to start fading out altogether. Technically, developers can still release updates for the aging operating system version, but that won’t likely be the case from this point on.
“The Android Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) platform is seven years old and the active device count has been below 1% for some time. Consequently, we are deprecating support for ICS in future releases of Google Play services. For devices running ICS, the Google Play Store will no longer update Play Services APK beyond version 14.7.99.”
This isn’t the biggest change. There are less than 1% of devices out there in the wild running Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. And for the 6 million devices out there running the old version, they are probably no longer active or daily drivers. The changes are already in effect on Google’s end.
When is the last time you saw a device out in the wild running Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich?
[via Android Developers Blog]
