Is HP Prime Pro on Play Store? (hit and miss)

[goosnarrggh]

(07-24-2023 08:49 PM)StephenG1CMZ Wrote:  Thank you for that explanation.
So Google encourage you to keep an old phone to improve app visibility.

That is an indirect impact. Their expectation is that the majority of customers will keep on rushing to buy the latest new phone, and Google wants to use that as a stick to poke app developers into keeping their apps up to date.

Although it is possible to write an app that targets the latest version of Android while remaining backward compatible with older versions, this becomes more and more difficult as the differences between successive Android versions continues to grow. For example, as of today, the Facebook app is simultaneously released with separate optimized builds for Android 6, Android 9, and Android 11. All of them target either Android 12 or 13; that is mandatory. But internally, they each employ different levels of compromises and fallback methods to allow the app to function optimally using the different sets of APIs which existed in different historical versions of Android. This requires a concerted effort on Meta's part to keep the app serviceable on older devices while continuing to comply with Google's requirements for the latest devices. Other app developers may simply choose to drop support for older OS versions.

On the other hand, we see what is happening with the HP Prime app: The app has not seen any updates in more than two years; Android 12 had not even been released yet at that point. And as a result, we are seeing the gradual attrition of the app's availability.

Quote:What about HP Prime Pro?
What old versions of Android does Google require you use for that?

I don't know for sure. I can only easily obtain a copy of the Lite app to inspect its API levels, because that's the only one that is freely downloadable. I'd guess that the Pro app probably is built from the exact same source code, just with certain features selectively compiled out; as a result I suspect that it probably has virtually identical technical requirements.