Google Play Services Drops Support For Android Ice Cream Sandwich (venturebeat.com)

Google is pulling support for Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich more than seven years after it was first introduced. The company announced in a blog post that Google Play services will no longer provide updates for the APIs (14 and 15) used by applications running on ICS. VentureBeat reports: Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS), as Android 4.0 to 4.0.4 is more affectionately known, was a landmark operating system in many ways, ushering in a whole new set of interface guidelines -- with a more minimalist design, not to mention groundbreaking features such as near-field communication (NFC), lockscreen support for camera and music controls, and facial recognition smarts for unlocking devices.

App developers who currently offer minimum support of API level 16 (Android 4.1 Jelly Bean) and over won't have to do anything as a result of these changes. However, if their apps currently support API level 14 or 15, they will encounter a build error when updating to a newer SDK version. Google is now recommending that all developers target API level 16 as the bare minimum, which means those still using Ice Cream Sandwich on their Android device won't even see the app update in Google Play, let alone be able to download it.

Comments

That seems like a fair amount of time...

[SuperKendall]

To me seven years seems like a good amount of time to keep something supported.

I think Apple still supports the App Store even for older devices (they can download the last version of apps that support the version of iOS they are on), but not entirely sure if that goes all the way back down the full line at this point.

Nice sentence

[Anonymous Coward]

Now there's a headline that would have been completely incomprehensible sense 30 years ago.