Google Play Services Will Stop Supporting Android Gingerbread In 2017

Android 2.3 Gingerbread was originally released back in December 2010. It is now November 2016, meaning that it has been about 6 years since its release, but surprisingly enough Google Play services actually still supports the platform. However that will change come 2017 as Google has announced that they will no longer support the platform.

As it stands, Google Play services V10.0.0 will be the last version to support Gingerbread, and that V10.2.0 will not. According to Google, “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.”

As to why they have decided to finally make this change, Google says, “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.”

There’s a good chance that you are probably using a phone that no longer runs on Gingerbread, and that developers have probably updated their apps to be optimized for Android 6.0 or newer by now. If anything we guess this just more or less closes the book on a chapter in Android’s history.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Cellphones
Tags: Android, Apps, Google