Google officially announced that version 10.0.0 of the Google Play Services (GPS) framework will be the last version that will support Android 2.3.0 Gingerbread. The next version of the GPS, 10.2.0, will not support the latter version anymore as the Android 4.0.1 Ice Cream Sandwich will be the minimum compatible version in any available apps in Google Play Store.
These changes will happen starting 2017 as the new technologies appears rapidly in the market and apps in the Google Play Store. It may be hard to believe, but there are still devices actually running old versions of Android like Gingerbread and Honeycomb.
1.5 percent of the smartphone users are still running these old versions which may be a bit challenging for the Google Play Services. Google explains that the Android Gingerbread version is almost six years old and developers have already stopped supporting it in their new apps and products. So by making these changes, Google will be able to provide a more impressive tool for developers with greater speed.
Android Gingerbread was released in December 2010 and it still runs on few numbers of Android devices in the world. In the succeeding years of Google Play Services, all released apps which were published in the Play Store using the future Software Development Kit of the GPS version 10.0.0, will not be able to connect to Android Gingerbread devices.
According to Talk Android, Android developers of Google suggest other appdevelopers to change their code to set the minimum Application Program Interface level to 14 when the new version 10.2.0 of Google Play Services is released. The remaining users of the old Android platforms will no longer see the apps in Google Play Store once these new applications published the new minimum requirement.
Together with the change to the Google Play Services framework, this new minimum API level support will be incorporated into Firebase. Technology moves very fast, someday, it might happen that the Google Play Store will publish high-ends apps and games that we never think could happen in the future.