Just a small contribution... I see no problem in updating the minimum
requirements as the percentage of users in 5.0 is currently marginal.
In the applications we publish we have already updated the requirements for
minSDK 24.
From: julio cesar sanchez
Sent: 08 March 2023 12:05
To: dev@cordova.apache.org
Subject: Re: [DISCUSS] Android - New Minimum SDK?
As far as I know the problems with upgradeable webviews on some device
manufacturers affect all versions, not only 5.0. Some vendors decide to not
make it updatable, and others use their own implementation instead of the
system one.
Anyway, I’m ok with 24
El El mié, 8 mar 2023 a las 1:49, Norman Breau
escribió:
> I'm fine with min SDK 24. I do think however we should support
> the factory webview version (based on AOSP) instead of picking a chrome
> version number, purely because that isn't very enforceable (Could lead
> to poor app user experience).
> But if required we can discuss that further in another thread since it's
> kind of off-topic to Min SDK.
>
> I also agree that if we are picking Min SDK numbers, we should pick the
> base (e.g. Support Android 7.0+ instead of 7.1+).
> If I recall correctly, it was chosen for Android 5.1 purely because
> there was known issues regarding upgradeable webviews on some device
> manufacturers with Android 5.0.
>
> FYI I skipped API 25 because there was a lack of data points.
>
> On 2023-03-07 7:55 p.m., julio cesar sanchez wrote:
> > Any other opinions about it?
> >
> >
> >
> > El jueves, 8 de diciembre de 2022, julio cesar sanchez <
> > jcesarmob...@gmail.com> escribió:
> >
> >> I was going to propose to bump the minSDK to 23 since we have been in 22
> >> for a few versions, but I think going to 27 is too much and would make
> >> users to not update or to move to something else.
> >>
> >> The truth is, with google support libraries we won't really be cleaning
> up
> >> that much code since the support libraries (android x core and such)
> take
> >> care of that.
> >> cordova-android has 2 SDK_INT version checks, one for N and another for
> M,
> >> statusbar plugin has one for M, camera plugin has one for 28,
> inappbrowser
> >> has one for O.
> >> We probably have more code for supporting old cordova versions (in the
> >> plugins) that probably nobody uses than for supporting old android
> versions.
> >> BTW, you missed Android 7.1 (SDK 25).
> >>
> >> Also, I wouldn't go with Android 8.1, in any case I would choose 8.0, it
> >> was weird when we went with Android 5.1 instead of 5.0 or 6.0 as the
> code
> >> to support it was basically the same as for supporting 5.0.
> >> And related to that, I would count minor versions as one major, so
> Android
> >> 8 should be 8.0 and 8.1, so the usage would be 8.5%, and Android 7 (7.0
> and
> >> 7.1) would be close to the 5% threshold. So we should go to minSDK 24
> tops.
> >>
> >> We can also do as Capacitor does and say that we support Chrome 60+ (or
> >> the version we decide), so if people use an emulator where the default
> >> version is older, it's not supported despite the Android version is. But
> >> for real devices, the % of out of date WebViews is much much smaller.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> El jue, 8 dic 2022 a las 16:59, Norman Breau ()
> >> escribió:
> >>
> >>> Hi Apache Cordova community,
> >>>
> >>> I'm writing to propose that we increase our Minimum SDK on our next
> >>> major release of cordova-android
> >>> and I wanted to get a feel of the Cordova community of what a new good
> >>> target to be, should we increase
> >>> the minimum SDK.
> >>>
> >>> First I wanted to link a resource for the Android OS market share by
> >>> Android Version[1].
> >>>
> >>> Based on November 2021-2022 the data summarized as follows:
> >>>
> >>> Android 5.1 (API 22) - 1.32%
> >>> Android 6.0 (API 23) - 2.45%
> >>> Android 7.0 (API 24) - 2.64%
> >>> Android 8.0 (API 26) - 2.61%
> >>> Android 8.1 (API 27) - 5.89%
> >>> Android >= 9.0 (API 28+) - 9% or greater
> >>>
> >>> It's desirable to drop old versions eventually because maintaining
> >>> backwards support can be difficult, particularly when Android
> introduces
> >>> new systems where it may only be available on newer API devices.
> >>> Additionally, every Android OS version could potentially be running
> >>> a really old system webview assuming the device has never been updated
> >>> from factory settings. Which based on the Android AOSP emulators, are
> as
> >>> follows:
> >>>
> >>> Android 5.1 - Chrome 39
> >>> Android 6.0 - Chrome 44
> >>> Android 7.0 - Chrome 52
> >>> Android 8.0 - Chrome 58
> >>> Android 8.1 - Chrome 61
> >>> Android 9.0+ - Chrome 66+
> >>>
> >>> I think traditionally, Cordova uses a 5% threshold to determine
> >>> supported devices, so I propose that for cordova-android@12, we
> increase
> >>> the Minimum SDK to API 27 or Android 8.1,
> >>> which contains 2 main benefits: 1) Allowing us to start cleaning up the
> >>> codebase significantly and 2) Cordova apps can
