Key Takeaways
- Google is ending Play Services support for Android 4.4 KitKat, which was released nearly ten years ago and is now only running on only 0.5% of actively-used Android devices.
- While nothing should break immediately for users still on KitKat, over time they may experience problems with the Play Store and Play Services APIs, such as location APIs and push notifications.
- Google has already ended Play Services updates for earlier Android releases.
Android phones and tablets can remain functional for a long time, even after official OS and security updates have ended. That’s partially thanks to Google Play Services, which powers the Play Store and some other system features, and can be updated independently of the operating system. However, Google is now ending Play Services on Android 4.4 KitKat, marking an official end to any support for that version.
Android 4.4 KitKat was first released in September 2013, nearly ten years ago, and usage has been on a slow decline as older phones and tablets are replaced. As of June 2023, it was only running on 0.5% of all actively-used Android devices, down from 0.6% in April 2023. Since the number of affected devices is so low at this point (relative to other Android devices, anyway), Google has decided that Play Services 23.30.99 will be the final version for Android 4.4 KitKat. Google’s other applications and services moved on from KitKat a long time ago — Google Chrome currently requires Android 7.0 or later.
Google announced in a blog post, “The Android KitKat (KK) platform was first released ~10 years ago and since then, we’ve introduced many innovative improvements and features for Android, which are unavailable on KK. As of July 2023, the active device count on KK is below 1% as more and more users update to the latest Android versions. Therefore, we are no longer supporting KK in future releases of Google Play services.”
So, what does that mean for people still using an Android 4.4 device? Well, nothing should break right now, but over time the Play Store and APIs provided by Play Services (such as location APIs and push notifications) may have problems or stop working entirely. Google ended Play Services updates for Android 4.1, 4.2, and 4.3 at the same time in July 2021, when all three releases combined dropped below 1% of global usage.
The end of Play Services updates is the end of the road for a given Android release, but KitKat had a great run. It was released alongside the Nexus 5, and went on to appear on other Google phones, as well as many devices from Samsung and other manufacturers. It was replaced by Android 5.0 Lollipop in November 2014, which was a significant design overhaul of the entire operating system.
Source: Android Developers Blog