If you’re the kind of person who likes to keep their Android phone or tablet running for several years, you might want to keep in mind that Google Calendar may drop support for devices that don’t run Android 8 or newer.
The team of DeSpAndroid (through Android Police) has discovered code and an image in the latest version of Google Calendar for Android that tells the user that “your current Android version is no longer supported.”
There is a flag labeled “UnsupportedOperatingSystem__enabled” and the app is now marked as supporting only Android 8 (Oreo) and newer. For now, though, it doesn’t appear that the switch has been flipped that will disqualify older devices.
When that happens, if you try to run the Google Calendar app on anything older than Android 8, you’ll see an on-screen message asking you to upgrade. Presumably, Google Calendar will still be available via a mobile web browser on these phones and tablets.
The end is near
To be fair to Google, Android 8 was launched back in August 2017. There won’t be many devices that are still running Android 7 (or Nougat) and can’t be updated to Android 8, with the last Android 7.1.2 update being released in April 2017.
According to StatCounter2.12% of Android devices worldwide run Android 7 or Android 7.1, while another 3.42% of devices are slightly older than that. So we’re looking at about 1 in 20 phones and tablets in total. The latest version, Android 14, was rolled out in October 2023.
Some of those older devices are eligible for upgrades to newer Android versions, but if you have one that doesn’t, it might be time to think about investing in a new gadget – at least if you want to stay Google Calendar to use.
In addition to offering an improved set of features, newer versions of Android also give you better security, which is probably Google’s main motivation here. According to TheSpAndroid, Google Calendar on Android currently supports devices running Android 5 (Lollipop), launched in June 2014.
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