Google is dropping Play Services support for Ice Cream Sandwich

We’re now at Android 9.0 Pie, and Google is ready to finally end API service releases for one of the platform’s aging versions.

Google has announced that it will be ending Play Services support for Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. That means that updates for apps on the older version of Android will slowly dwindle down to zero from this point on. Moving forward, Google is asking developers to instead consider Android 4.1 Jelly Bean as the baseline version, and the minimum level of support, via API level 16.

On a percentage level, this isn’t crazy. Ice Cream Sandwich is only on 0.03 percent of devices at this point. However, when you consider that means around 6 million devices out there in the wild will be directly affected by this, it’s pretty crazy to think about. The bright side here is that it’s more likely that those devices running the aging version of Android aren’t actually active and being used as a daily driver.

Still, good to be aware of the changes as Google implements them.

source: androidandme