Android’s Incredible Backward Compatibility
One of the incredible and I feel underappreciated things about Android is how far the Android team goes to try to make new versions of Android backward compatible with Apps that were written for previous versions of the operating system.
One of my first Apps, Tip Master, is still in the Play Store, I have not updated this App since August 17, 2014, at that time the latest and greatest Android version was Kit-Kat version 4.4, API version 19.
And here we are seven versions and more than 6 years later and the App can still be found by new users and installed on the latest version of Android!
And why shouldn’t it? The app still provides the same value it did when I first released it, tip calculations haven’t changed and a percent is still a percent. Plus it kinda looks cool now with the old Holo theme, kinda retro 😎. This is not the case on other mobile platforms where users and Apps are forced to move on to the latest and greatest versions or be thrown in a ditch.
Now this is not always the case, this App still works because it’s relatively simple and mainly uses the interface features of Android and has no dependencies on the more complex parts of Android which might have undergone more significant changes in the last 6 years such as storage or permissions.
This kind of backward compatibility work is not always easy and might create other challenges for both Google’s Android team and for us developers but I for one appreciate it.
