4 years ago by CJefferson
Note that the original title is "Sign-in on Android devices running Android 2.3.7 or lower will not be allowed starting September 27". Android 3 was released February 22, 2011 -- I haven't seen any devices running Android that old in a while.
4 years ago by dang
Yes, the submitted title ("Old Android versions will no longer be able to log into Google account") broke the site guidelines: "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize." We've fixed it now. Thanks!
4 years ago by walrus01
Four years ago, in some of the poorest developing nation markets on earth, the local currency equivalent of $60 Android phones for sale in local stores (random cheap Mediatek chipset and 3.5" screens), were running either Android 4.0 or 4.4
4 years ago by baybal2
Yep, 4.X Android is still going strong, almost like Windows XP.
It's because it's the last Android version Google released without turning it unusable without Gapps.
It is simple to customise. Put any of the crazy CyanogenMod era skins on it, and then customise UI any way you want with your own brand look.
And it is simple to code for, unlike overengineered APIs of later Android versions, with simple raw filesystem access being a particularly highly sought feature.
4 years ago by derefr
That's interesting. If there are use-cases for this old version of Android, is there a reason that the people who want to build such devices, haven't created a "living" descendant OS forking off from Android 4.x, with the old APIs but a modern kernel et al? Sort of like the living GTK2 that stuck around for so long after GTK3.
4 years ago by Abishek_Muthian
Not to mention the forced online education due to pandemic, I wouldn't be surprised if even Android 2.3.7 usage has up ticked due to that in poor countries as many children are dependent upon donated smartphones[1][2].
4 years ago by vagrantJin
Can confirm this to be accurate. My own device is running 5.1.1
4 years ago by toast0
Android 3 wasn't generally available for phones; it was mostly tablets.
4 years ago by Ologn
Yes. Officially, every version up to Android 2.3 was for phones. Samsung wanted to make a tablet and made one with 2.2 and 2.3, even though Android did not officially support tablets for those versions. Android 3.x was a version just for tablets (Honeycomb). Android 4 (Ice Cream Sandwich) merged the phone ability of the 2.x branch with the tablet ability of the 3.x branch - 4.0 was the first Android version which officially supported phone and tablet.
4 years ago by blihp
IIRC, exclusively tablets. I seem to recall Google saying while they wouldn't prohibit phone use, they we're going to help manufacturers with it and that they'd have to wait for Android 4.
4 years ago by fomine3
Honeycomb was even closed source except some GPL
4 years ago by lostmsu
Yeah, why was the title editoralized by removing the affected versions? It is the most important part of the announcement, and was present in the original title.
4 years ago by prophesi
The title is a bit clickbaity. This is for Android versions 2.3.7 and lower, which was released in September 21, 2011.
4 years ago by toast0
It's Android, release date of the OS doesn't matter so much as when was the last device that doesn't upgrade past 2.3.7 released and/or when did that device leave mass retail. Or some other threshold.
A ton of 2.3 devices weren't upgradable to 4. And there were a lot of devices made with 2.3 well after 4 was available. The numbers are probably small though, WhatsApp (where I used to work) ended support for 2.3.7 in early 2020 because the user numbers no longer justified the effort to keep that working. Usage was enough to justify almost a two year notice period though.
4 years ago by kllrnohj
The number of 2.3 devices still alive is under 0.1%. Independent dashboards like https://www.appbrain.com/stats/top-android-sdk-versions and https://gs.statcounter.com/os-version-market-share/android/m... don't even list Android 2.3 at all anymore the population is so small.
According to https://www.phonemore.com/systems/android/2-3-6-gingerbread/ it looks like ~2014 was the last new Gingerbread device released?
4 years ago by citrin_ru
It's a sad state of Android ecosystem that on 10 years old hardware you can run only 10 years software because vendors rarely provide updates after end of sales date and at the same time they make it very hard to install something like LineageOS (e. g. use locked bootloader and closed-source drivers).
I have a 15 years old notebook and can install a modern Linux/FreeBSD versions on it, but I cannot upgrade 7 years old smartphone.
4 years ago by zozbot234
That's really an issue with the embedded ecosystem in general. Pre-Android devices were far worse.
4 years ago by blihp
Sure, pre-Android devices dropped support shortly after you bought them, but they were often still functional. Disabling Google login on an Android (non-AOSP) device effectively bricks it for most users.
4 years ago by ainiriand
I think the title is perfectly accurate. That is exactly what's going to happen.
4 years ago by yupper32
It's click-baity because it withholds necessary information in order to get you to click on it.
Saying the version number or release date would stop most people from clicking on it, because it matters much less.
4 years ago by tantalor
That's how all headlines work.
4 years ago by n4bz0r
I wouldn't go as far as saying "perfectly". What is "old"? I clicked thinking my Android 4 device (which I use daily) is fucked.
4 years ago by mdp2021
Stochastic language ("Topitanians are strong"), "S is P" = "The median of S is P" = "Android 7 will..." (Very stretched interpretation.)
Logical language ("[All/Some] Topitanians are strong"), "S is P" = "All S are P" = "All old Android versions...". Without an explicit quantifier, a statement to be interpreted in logical language easily defaults to using the universal "All": the statement "Coal burns", if not stochastic (envisaging exceptions) but logical, is meant to express that all of the instances do.
"Old Android versions" does not default to "Some old Android versions".
4 years ago by ainiriand
This is very interesting, thank you for teaching me a bit about logic today. Also, it looks like the headline was amended.
4 years ago by jfoster
It could be much more exact by mentioning the version & date that it was released on.
4 years ago by dpwm
The title of the page conveys more information, albeit in more words:
> Sign-in on Android devices running Android 2.3.7 or lower will not be allowed starting September 27
4 years ago by dleslie
I have a Nexus S with a decent battery; and while it _can_ log in, the relevant Google services and apps that it ships with are broken beyond usability.
It would be nice if Google endeavoured to keep old Android working and security patched, rather than force a faster e-waste cycle.
4 years ago by gjsman-1000
Android 2.3+ accounts for less than 0.2% of devices. It doesn't really force an e-waste cycle when its that microscopic already. The e-waste cycle has already occurred.
By that logic we'd still be supporting the Space Shuttle, the NES, the Sega Genesis, the Apple II, the Altair, the 80286, the Laserdisc player, the Video CD, the Kodak cameras... We should never drop legacy, ever.
Plus, your Nexus S actually got 4.1.2, which means it's still supported even after this.
4 years ago by pizza234
Android 8.0 is not supported anymore, and it suffers from very serious security vulnerabilities.
Versions up to 8.0 constitute around 20% of the phones (as of June 2021¹), which creates a significant amount of e-waste, particularly embarrassing when considering phones like the Nexus 5x, which is a perfectly usable model.
[¹] https://www.statista.com/statistics/921152/mobile-android-ve...
4 years ago by gjsman-1000
I'm talking mainly about the OG article (which discontinues 2.3 and earlier from Google Services), not Android's terrible long-term support compared to iOS which wholly deserves criticism.
But they can still access Google.
4 years ago by nyanpasu64
The Nexus 5X would be a perfectly usable model, but some fail over time due to a SOC with defective "big" CPU cores (IIRC).
4 years ago by dredmorbius
There are billions of Android devices. A tenth of a percent of billions is double-digit millions.
Google+ userIDs were for a long time effectively new Gmail and Android registrations. Those peaked at about 3 billion before the automatic assignment of a G+ account was broken in 2015. Conservatively, there are likely well over 6 billion such registrations, which would be 12 million Android 2.3 devices.
Small fractions at Google scale are large numbers.
Realise too that Android shows up in numerous devices, including some embedded tools, as well as tablets, e-readers, and other systems a casual reader might not be aware of.
4 years ago by dleslie
With a cap kit, battery replacement (if relevant), then the NES, Genesis, Apple II, Altair, 286, Laserdisc, Video CD, and Kodaks still work just fine.
Importantly: they are repairable.
My Nexus S is a paperweight because Google kept it relatively closed. My BlackBerry Priv is even worse, since I can't root it.
4 years ago by md_
Repairability seems like only half the story. The devices you list are all mostly non-networked; nobody cares about security vulnerabilities in your NES because it isn't connected to the Internet and handling highly confidential information. That's not true of your smartphone.
Unfortunately, the reality with online devices is that:
a) They are sufficiently complex that they have an indeterminate (and effectively unending) supply of vulnerabilities
b) Effective vulnerability management requires vendor support
c) The market favors one-time ("sale") models, not ongoing ("subscription") models
As a result, vendors support devices for a fixed amount of time, often subject to arbitrary constraints (like going out of business or unexpectedly high costs of fixes).
From a consumer perspective, this usually manifests as computing devices getting worse over time--less performant, less secure, and surprising and arbitrary end-of-lifing.
You might argue that a more open device ecosystem allows open source contributors to fix vulnerabilities. This is true, to a degree, but only to a degree--just as (past some point) it isn't worth it for a vendor to keep patching a long-obsolete product with a tiny userbase, it's similarly true that an esoteric open source product won't attract a robust community that can meaningfully support it.
While free software advocates like to say "But at least it would be up to me to patch it," in practice, for most users (who aren't going to write their own patches, or hire a team of professionals to do so!), predictability, transparency, and fairness are the critical components in the products they use, not "openness" per se.
4 years ago by djaychela
I'm not sure that logic holds - many of the devices you mention will still work (space shuttle aside) - whereas that will not be the case with these older android devices.
While it may be 0.2%, it'd be interesting to see what numbers that actually equates to.
4 years ago by wing-_-nuts
I know this is for a very old version of andriod, but man, it would be really nice if they just said 'android x has these spec requirements, you can try to update any device to any version at your own risk.
Why do smart phone manufacturers get to decide what version of andriod I can run?
4 years ago by zozbot234
> but man, it would be really nice if they just said 'android x has these spec requirements, you can try to update any device to any version at your own risk.
You can try and run an android GSI, if your device is recent enough to support those. Though even GSI's come in a variety of 'flavors', so they're not literally one-size-fits-all.
4 years ago by yjftsjthsd-h
> Why do smart phone manufacturers get to decide what version of andriod I can run?
Because they (and the chip vendors) are the ones writing drivers and never upstreaming them or porting them to new enough kernels to support newer Android versions.
4 years ago by extrememacaroni
hackernews: I can't believe 10+ year old hardware and software is forcefully made obsolete
also hackernews: man do I hate working on and maintaining legacy stuff
4 years ago by rafaelturk
oh the irony!
4 years ago by undefined
4 years ago by sslayer
Imagine if it was your 10 year old Tesla!
4 years ago by ggggtez
This assumes that your phone hasn't had any updates for 10 years.
If your Tesla had no updates for 10 years, you probably would also be wise to not check your email on it.
4 years ago by gjsman-1000
Imagine if it was your Tesla after 10 years of no software upgrades.
(Except all Teslas are still receiving updates.)
And also signing into Google on Tesla accomplishes what exactly?
4 years ago by tempest_
They still updating that original roadster ?
4 years ago by Hamuko
Is there really anything to update in the Roadster? It's very barebones.
4 years ago by remus
I wonder what proportion of android devices are running <3.0?
4 years ago by opencl
The stats from Google lump everything under 4.1 together at 0.2%.
I would link to it but Google removed the chart from the web a while ago and just tells you to look at it in Android Studio's new project wizard.
4 years ago by david_allison
Android Studio doesn't allow you to target less than Android 4.1 (also lumped at 0.2%)
Screenshot from the Project Wizard: https://i.ibb.co/bgjQQ4W/image.png
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