Say Goodbye to Android 2.3 Gingerbread: No more Google Play Services for the OS

Surveys indicate that about 1.3% of all devices running Android are still running Gingerbread on them and if you are one of those users, it's REALLY time to upgrade. Google has officially declared that all support for Android 2.3.x devices will be discontinued from 2017, as soon as they launch the next version of the Play Services (v10.2).

What this means is that your device will neither be able to load any of the Google Play service applications, nor will it get any updates to the existing apps on it. The minimum OS requirement for availing the Google apps and services will shift to Android 4.0.1 Ice Cream Sandwich, post the launch of Play Services version 10.2 next year.

According to Google, "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). The next scheduled release of these libraries, version 10.2.0, will increase the minimum supported API level from 9 to 14 (Android 4.0.1, Ice Cream Sandwich). This change will happen in early 2017."

"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."

I would suggest that you upgrade to a very minimum of Android Lollipop 5.1.1 or preferably Android Marshmallow 6.0.1 when you do, because Ice Cream Sandwich is sure to be cut out soon as well.

Head over to https://forum.youmobile.org/downloads/ to find all the latest updates for your smartphone.

Source

Saikat Kar (tech-enthusiast)