How old is your mobile? And how often do you update your system software?
As a mobile based business, we are always conscious of the balance between
- supporting as many versions of Android and iOS as possible so potential customers with older devices are not disadvantaged, and
- the need to stay up to date with security, design and best practice.
We don’t want to force anyone to pay loads of money for new devices all the time, but standards change very quickly, and we must do our best to stay updated, particularly when it comes to security, but also functionality.
We’re coming to a point where we may need to update the minimum systems required to run our app, so I thought I’d get some views from the community.
Currently, Dozens can be run as long as you have:
- iOS 11.0 (from 2017)
- Android 5.0 (from 2014)
For context, the latest versions of these systems are:
- iOS 14.6
- Android 11 (version 30)
As you can see, we reach quite far back at the moment, and a lot has happened and been released to improve security and performance in that time.
We’re not planning on jumping all the way to today’s versions, of course, but in order to assume certain functionality, we are proposing updating the minimum requirements to:
- iOS 13 - so requires iPhone 6S or later
- Android 6.0 - Android devices from 2015 onwards
Existing users would be encouraged to upgrade their operating system if possible. I understand that if not, the older version of the Dozens app would still work, but would not be updated.
Would that affect you? We know this would be a very small number of existing customers who would be affected, but how would you feel if this affected you?