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Comment by prophesi | Hacker News Reader

The title is a bit clickbaity. This is for Android versions 2.3.7 and lower, which was released in September 21, 2011.

It's Android, release date of the OS doesn't matter so much as when was the last device that doesn't upgrade past 2.3.7 released and/or when did that device leave mass retail. Or some other threshold.

A ton of 2.3 devices weren't upgradable to 4. And there were a lot of devices made with 2.3 well after 4 was available. The numbers are probably small though, WhatsApp (where I used to work) ended support for 2.3.7 in early 2020 because the user numbers no longer justified the effort to keep that working. Usage was enough to justify almost a two year notice period though.

The number of 2.3 devices still alive is under 0.1%. Independent dashboards like https://www.appbrain.com/stats/top-android-sdk-versions and https://gs.statcounter.com/os-version-market-share/android/m... don't even list Android 2.3 at all anymore the population is so small.

According to https://www.phonemore.com/systems/android/2-3-6-gingerbread/ it looks like ~2014 was the last new Gingerbread device released?

It's a sad state of Android ecosystem that on 10 years old hardware you can run only 10 years software because vendors rarely provide updates after end of sales date and at the same time they make it very hard to install something like LineageOS (e. g. use locked bootloader and closed-source drivers).

I have a 15 years old notebook and can install a modern Linux/FreeBSD versions on it, but I cannot upgrade 7 years old smartphone.

That's really an issue with the embedded ecosystem in general. Pre-Android devices were far worse.

Sure, pre-Android devices dropped support shortly after you bought them, but they were often still functional. Disabling Google login on an Android (non-AOSP) device effectively bricks it for most users.

I think the title is perfectly accurate. That is exactly what's going to happen.

I wouldn't go as far as saying "perfectly". What is "old"? I clicked thinking my Android 4 device (which I use daily) is fucked.

I wonder if iOS5 devices can still log into the apple store.

Good question. Maybe someone here can confirm. Is the app store covering so much ground as not being able to access the Google account? Maps, Gmail, analytics...

Actually, even though iOS5 was released in 2011, all devices that supported iOS5 were able to update to iOS6. I wonder, how functional an iOS6 device could be today.

The original iPad is stuck on 5.1.1 I think.

For kicks I pulled out an iOS 5.1.1 device and I was able to sign-in to the App Store and install an old version of an app using my current Apple ID. I'm genuinely surprised it worked.

Not as direct a question as it may seem: the iPhone 4s (IIRC the first device released with iOS5) could be upgraded as far as iOS9 but many Android devices never saw much by way of upgrades unless you count rooting them to install something manually. Though how well those devices run newer versions of the OS and newer apps is likely a question with many answers (most, but not all, negative).

That's typically an argument that "iDevices have more value because you can use them longer than Android". You can't have it both ways - "old android devices" in this context are devices older than iPhone 4s, and iPhone 4s themselves are not very much in use today, so it's that much less likely that Android phones would be.

Realistically, very few people will be affected, and the business backlash for Google is going to be 0. BUT, on the other hand, if anybody at all is going to be affected - those are probably some of the poorest and most vulnerable members of the society (which is also why they're going to not have a strong voice). The social cost, if any, will only be known by Google.

It could be much more exact by mentioning the version & date that it was released on.

It's click-baity because it withholds necessary information in order to get you to click on it.

Saying the version number or release date would stop most people from clicking on it, because it matters much less.

That's how all headlines work.

Nowadays, yes, but that’s not necessarily how they’re supposed to work.

A headline should give a reader actionable information, with the article itself serving to give more detailed context.

This headline doesn’t give actionable information, because you have no idea whether your android version is affected.

Not really, and they don't have to. A simple change would suffice:

> Old Android versions [from 2011 and earlier] will no longer be able to log into Google account

By that logic you have headlines like "Windows installs will now require a Microsoft account", with the article saying it only applies to Windows 11 Home. I tend to avoid reading articles where the headline deliberately avoid information in an attempt to get clicks.

Stochastic language ("Topitanians are strong"), "S is P" = "The median of S is P" = "Android 7 will..." (Very stretched interpretation.)

Logical language ("[All/Some] Topitanians are strong"), "S is P" = "All S are P" = "All old Android versions...". Without an explicit quantifier, a statement to be interpreted in logical language easily defaults to using the universal "All": the statement "Coal burns", if not stochastic (envisaging exceptions) but logical, is meant to express that all of the instances do.

"Old Android versions" does not default to "Some old Android versions".

This is very interesting, thank you for teaching me a bit about logic today. Also, it looks like the headline was amended.

The title of the page conveys more information, albeit in more words:

> Sign-in on Android devices running Android 2.3.7 or lower will not be allowed starting September 27

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