The 11th iteration of the Android operating system—codenamed KitKat—will be officially out of support, as Google is set to drop it soon. The operating system will see its retirement on its 10th birthday on August 2023.
Via an Android Developers Blog post, Google sent word regarding the cessation of support for KitKat in Google Services’ future releases, citing the overall number of Android users using the said OS having fallen below 1 percent as the cause.
More specifically, KitKat devices will become subject to restrictions to only older versions of the Google Play services. That is, not getting updated beyond version 23.30.99, per the blog.
Upon its death, Android KitKat users will experience incompatibility issues with the Google Play platform, rendering the system almost obsolete.
In a report by Android Authority, it is revealed that while there are still some 15 million devices that run on KitKat, it is not the most used version of the system as the honor goes to Android 11 (codenamed Red Velvet Cake), as of May 2023.
Based on the global share, devices running on Android KitKat makes up only 0.5 percent of the overall, which is too low to gather Google’s continued attention.
Although getting KitKat’s life support cut off would imply that any devices that run with it will be rendered useless, the notion only applies to services that rely on Google Play services. This meant that the devices themselves will still have a degree of use.