Hi Apache Cordova community,
I'm writing to propose that we increase our Minimum SDK on our next
major release of cordova-android
and I wanted to get a feel of the Cordova community of what a new good
target to be, should we increase
the minimum SDK.
First I wanted to link a resource for the Android OS market share by
Android Version[1].
Based on November 2021-2022 the data summarized as follows:
Android 5.1 (API 22) - 1.32%
Android 6.0 (API 23) - 2.45%
Android 7.0 (API 24) - 2.64%
Android 8.0 (API 26) - 2.61%
Android 8.1 (API 27) - 5.89%
Android >= 9.0 (API 28+) - 9% or greater
It's desirable to drop old versions eventually because maintaining
backwards support can be difficult, particularly when Android introduces
new systems where it may only be available on newer API devices.
Additionally, every Android OS version could potentially be running
a really old system webview assuming the device has never been updated
from factory settings. Which based on the Android AOSP emulators, are as
follows:
Android 5.1 - Chrome 39
Android 6.0 - Chrome 44
Android 7.0 - Chrome 52
Android 8.0 - Chrome 58
Android 8.1 - Chrome 61
Android 9.0+ - Chrome 66+
I think traditionally, Cordova uses a 5% threshold to determine
supported devices, so I propose that for cordova-android@12, we increase
the Minimum SDK to API 27 or Android 8.1,
which contains 2 main benefits: 1) Allowing us to start cleaning up the
codebase significantly and 2) Cordova apps can start assuming a much
better JS feature support in their webviews as
can start assuming that the webview will be at least version 61 for most
devices.
[1] https://gs.statcounter.com/android-version-market-share
Cheers,
Norman
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