[richardwhiuk]

In order to release a new version to the appstores, both Google and Apple require a certain minimum version for the app to be compiled against.

Historically, Apple gives you about a year before you have to compile against the latest SDK, and Google gave you a lot longer.

However, recently, both have become more aggressive about requiring new versions to be compiled against the latest SDKs.

Thus you can't do a "proper" release without moving up to the latest SDK.

Compiling against the latest SDK often breaks things, especially for an app which does a lot of things in the background.

This is part of the "cost of staying still" in mobile app development, which is both hard to predict, and can be very expensive.

[Aachen]

Does this also mean older devices are forced into obsolescence? Since this is minsdk and not maxsdk it sounds like it, but there's still many apps that run on my 2018 device with Android 7 (and even 2012 device with 4.4) so that can't really be.

[distances]

No it doesn't. It's about targetSdk, not minSdk.

[richardwhiuk]

Sorry, yes, I mean targetSdk not minSdk - though in practice they are linked.

[distances]

No, they aren't linked. Maybe you are mixing it with compileSdk, that and targetSdk are usually linked but minSdk is almost always considerably behind.

[swanswan]

Well anyway older devices are indeed forced into obsolescence, at least OS-wise.