Nearly 30 million smartphones, tablets and other devices running Android 4.4 KitKat will soon become useless or with limited functionality (photo: Android.com)
Starting next month, tens of millions of devices running the Android 4.4 KitKat operating system will be excluded from Google Play services. Some apps from the official online store will no longer update, while others will not be able to work at all.
Google announced Android 4.4 KitKat in September 2013, and by now the platform is severely outdated. “Since then, we’ve introduced many innovative improvements and features to Android that aren’t available in KK,” Google said in a statement.
Today, Android KitKat is practically not used on working devices. “As of July 2023, the number of active KK devices is less than 1% as more users upgrade to the latest Android versions. Therefore, in future releases of Google Play Services, we will no longer support KK,” the company added.
In the history of Android version KitKat left a noticeable mark. In 2013, it received high marks for increased system performance and simplified interface. The first phone on this platform was the Google Nexus 5.
Globally, Android runs on about 3 billion devices, according to Business of Apps. So “less than 1%” means less than 30 million smartphones, tablets and other devices that will now have limited functionality or become completely useless.
End of support means that some apps and features will no longer work on Android 4.4 KitKat devices. These are Google Play services such as location and mapping, payment processing, single sign-on for third-party services and apps, and more. The next version in line is Android 5.0 Lollipop, introduced in 2014.