Those still using an Android Jelly Bean smartphone may want to upgrade soon as Google announced it would stop seeding Play Services updates to these devices.

This affects Android Jelly Bean version 4.1, 4.2, and 4.3 with API versions 16, 17, and 18, respectively. If this is the type of device you have, you still have time, as it will still receive the 21.30.11 update at the end of August 2021.

Considering how old Jelly Bean is, maybe you should actually consider an upgrade, especially since there are a lot of capable budget phones under Php5,000.

Jelly Bean is actually 9 years old now. Launched in 2012, it offered a couple of major improvements, such as Project Butter, that made UI move smoothly. It was also the first to introduce Google Now.

The end of support for an old OS will lighten the development team’s workload as older versions of Android need more complex special-case attention.

Meanwhile, Google is also encouraging app developers to stop supporting Jelly Bean. If they set their apps to Target API 19+, the one used on Android 4.4 KitKat, Jelly Bean owners can still install an older version of their apps.

But for apps with Jelly Bean phones as their major userbase, developers can upload multiple APKs to the Google Play Store, so Jelly Bean phones can still receive app updates the normal way.

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