To prevent you from downloading apps that might not be suitable for your version of Android, Google is launching a new feature.
In addition to being sometimes unusable, the applications concerned can pose real security problems for your smartphone.
A maximum of two years old API level
Google was pretty clear on this. The tech giant has announced that apps that don’t target an API level within two years of the latest major Android release will no longer be indexed on the Play Store. They will also no longer be made available for installation on up-to-date smartphones. For precision, a new level of API is implemented with each major update of Android. For Android 12, the API is number 31, and the previous version, Android 11, was number 30.
If security is Google’s main argument, it’s not for nothing. There are a whole bunch of apps that stay as long as possible on older API levels that are still supported, like Snapchat. The social network still uses API 22 from Android 5.1, simply because this level did not yet impose the new permissions model introduced in Android 6.0. By wishing to keep too much freedom over the use of user data, some development teams are putting their community at great risk. This is why Google wants to crack down.
It is still good to specify that this only concerns applications that update. Old, discontinued games and apps won’t be harmed, as long as the rest of the Play Store policies are still adhered to. But until when ?
Source : XDA Developers
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