If you are still playing Ingress and Pokémon GO on your device with Android 4.4 KitKat, it’s time to move on. In a tweet, Niantic announced both games will ditch the KitKat flavoured version of Android on July 1st.
According to the latest Android distribution chart from Google, 4.4 KitKat, first released in 2014 on the Nexus 5, still occupies around 6.9 percent of active Android devices around the world.
After July 1st, Ingress and Pokémon GO’s minimum Android OS requirement becomes 5.0 Lollipop. Surprisingly, the four-years-old Android OS still makes up the highest 16.9 percent of Android’s market distribution, suggesting the software fragmentation still plagues Android.
That doesn’t mean Google is ignoring the issue. In the past few years, the company made efforts to address the fragmentation problem by creating Project Treble.
Starting with Android Oreo 8.0, Google re-architectured the entire Android OS. The revamp allows smartphone makers to come up with updates quicker and encourage them to provide software support for Android devices longer.
Source: Niantic, Via: 9to5Google
MobileSyrup may earn a commission from purchases made via our links, which helps fund the journalism we provide free on our website. These links do not influence our editorial content. Support us here.
