The time has come to say our goodbyes to the last branded version of Android, 4.4 KitKat.
Named after the famous confectionary brand, Android 4.4 has sweetened our lives for a decade now.
As per the last time we checked at the Android platform distribution numbers (3 months ago), its usage had dropped to negligible levels, mostly because of its age as it doesn’t run on the newer devices users have been buying (how many phones have you had since 2013?). However, Google had continued to dutifully make the aging platform compatible with most of its ecosystem offerings by supporting it with newer releases of its Google Play services.
That is now coming to an end. Heck, even WhatsApp had read the writing on the wall a long time ago.
“The Android KitKat (KK) platform was first released ~10 years ago and since then, we’ve introduced many innovative improvements and features for Android, which are unavailable on KK. As of July 2023, the active device count on KK is below 1% as more and more users update to the latest Android versions. Therefore, we are no longer supporting KK in future releases of Google Play services. KK devices will not receive versions of the Play Services APK beyond 23.30.99,” a post on the Android developers blog penned by the Product Manager for Google Play services, Sarat Tummala, reads.
The changes affected API levels 19 and 20. The former is the Android KitKat we all knew while the latter was its wearables spinoff (responsible for the very first generation Android Wear – now WearOS – devices).
A similar fate befell KitKat’s predecessor, Jelly Bean, 2 years ago.
So long, KitKat, you really were a tasty treat.
