this post was submitted on 22 Dec 2023

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116

Android Auto will soon stop working on older devices (9to5google.com)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

38 comments fedilink hide all child comments

top 38 comments

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[–] [email protected] 32 points 10 months ago (7 children)

What's getting yanked is that older phones won't connect to Android Auto enabled vehicles if the phone is running Android Nougat. It must be Running Android Oreo or later.

For those not remembering, Nougat was released in 2016 and went out of support in 2019. By the most recent metric (Dec. 2022) about 4% of all Android devices currently run Nougat. So this will affect all fifteen of the people still running this OS.

Most devices that were originally sold with Nougat have an upgrade path to Oreo. The bigger problem is folks who purchased devices with Marshmallow (orig. 2015) or Lollipop (orig. 2014) who stopped receiving upgrades past Nougat. These are the devices that will most likely be impacted by this change.

Personally, I like to keep my devices for at least five years, so them deprecating 2016 and earlier is okay with me.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 10 months ago (1 children)

On the one hand: I don't see a reason for Google to keep supporting old versions.

On the other hand: pushing an update to an old device and sabotaging it by showing an "install updates" popup (as if that's even possible for devices still running Android 7, that's bullshit) is just dickish.

The old version of Android Auto works perfectly fine. Show a popup once if you want ("your device will no longer receive Android Auto updates, third party apps may stop working") but don't actually disable anything that's working perfectly fine.

Google pulled that shit before. I would understand if they had a customer support department that'd get flooded when newer hardware stopped working, but all Google has is a forum that no Google employees ever pay any attention to.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

The issue is they probably want to change serverside stuff without caring about the old stuff and the alternative to the update and it's prompt is that it will simply crash, show errors, hang or whatever....

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I don't really see what server side stuff an app on the dashboard of a car would need. Their Google Maps API works all the way back to the one installed with Android 2, and failing that users can install a number of navigation apps. Same with their music app (they already killed Play Music anyway).

The only thing I can think of is that they'd be killing Google Assistant on old phones, but that wouldn't mean the rest of Android Auto couldn't still work.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

No idea but I don't see why would bother with that if it isn't because it breaks in nasty ways (maybe with possible legal consequences?).

[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago (1 children)

We need to get to a point where smartphone work for more than 5 years. Hardware wise the battery is the only part that is guaranteed to need to be replaced.

Now whether they do it by stopping the race on Android version or supporting every device is up to them.

Desktop OS (Windows or Linux) support any version as long as the PC is powerful enough. Why on phone we're limited not by the capabilities of the CPU but its release date?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

Desktop OS (Windows or Linux) support any version as long as the PC is powerful enough.

Windows 10 will stop being supported next year, and Windows 11 can't be installed on old computers without regedit trickery.
32bit support was cut from most Linux distros.
So while it's true that desktop hardware is supported a lot longer, it's not supported indefinitely.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago

I don't think you understand how percentage works.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

All 120 million, actually.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago

How many of them have a compatible car, and are using it?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

The odds are as lot of those devices aren't even phones.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Damn, android os versions sound so tasty.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

What's this is version numbers? I don't know if this whimsical naming thing works for other brains but between android, debian, R, etc, etc, it no longer registers for me...

[–] [email protected] 24 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Why hasn't someone made an open-source implementation of the Android Auto client?

We already have open-source implementations of the AA head unit, and we have the AAwireless project.

I'd be kinda cool to run Android Auto on a Linux phone.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago (1 children)

be the change you want to see in the world

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

I kinda want to tbh, seems like an interesting project, but the whole thing seems really complicated and I might hit a road block with client certification.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 10 months ago (1 children)

You can probably just disable auto updates for Android Auto and the apps you use with it, but inevitably things will start breaking, like Play Services APIs that Android Auto relies on, or the APIs those older third-party apps you use rely on.

It sucks, but it was kinda inevitable for a system that has so many moving parts.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

For Android auto you can't really disable automatic updates as it checks by itself and refuses to run if it's too much outdated

[–] [email protected] 11 points 10 months ago (3 children)

This makes no sense to me. How do these two devices that are currently working together stop functioning? Does it require updating/auto updating the software on your phone to kill it? Seems ridiculous.

Or is this saying newer head units installed in cars might require a newer version of Android Auto that won’t work on an older phone OS?

[–] [email protected] 17 points 10 months ago (2 children)

This looks to be Google ending support for the Android Auto framework on older Android versions, that's all. It's not about the car, it's about the phone.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (2 children)

So if you don’t update your phone, it continues to work? But if I buy a new phone, it won’t work with the older car?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago

If you don't update Android Auto, maybe. Apps still rely on the framework that makes it work, so you are likely to have those break if they use features that Android Auto didn't have at the update freeze.

The version they're cutting off is really old, relatively speaking. You have to be on Oreo or later (8.0+), which came out in 2017.
Many apps you would use Android Auto will likely bump up to this break point soon. Waze, for example, is 7.0+. You're bound to run into issues being on Nougat or earlier soon, if not already.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Adding on to a bit from your comment that I missed, it's not affecting the car itself. The article should have used the word "phone" instead of "device".
All Android Auto is a screen for your phone that also hooks into car buttons. Your phone does all the hard work with projecting data to the screen. If your phone is too old, Android Auto might not work because apps don't work properly with the base framework by Google.
You can use a new phone on an older car that officially supports Auto/CarPlay. That's never been a problem.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

I mean, Android Auto runs on your phone and just transmits the video/audio to your car so yeah. It's just like any other app dropping support for older versions of the OS.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Maybe read the article?

Software updates and eventually you have to stop supporting older versions of Android. Apps do it all the time. Dropping support for Android 7.0 going into 2024 seems reasonable (it's only a couple percent of the total market).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I think a combination. Newer cars will require newer phones, older cars probably won't support newer phones. If I had an older car I may keep an old phone and hotspot it or something.

Or 3rd party radio

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I have a wireless CarPlay dongle for my car and I wonder if that could get around it.

Especially it simulates a wired CarPlay connection to the car, even if your device is Android Auto.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Are you using a phone from 2017 or earlier? If not, you have nothing to worry about. If so, I'm surprised it still works.
The article topic only affects phones with Android Nougat and earlier. If you're on Oreo or later (8.0+), you're fine. This has nothing to do with the car and everything to do with the phone doing the screen projection.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago

A forced nag screen "please buy a new phone to continue" seems shitty, can't they just stop targeting that specific android version instead of bricking the functionality with an automatic update?

I don't see the issue of using an older version of Android auto on an older phone, just stop getting new features...

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Ok so how do I replace the system in my car? Mitsubishi Outlander 2015 Sport.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Perhaps I misunderstand, but isn't this talking about the Android version of the phone that you're using connected to use Android Auto?

[–] [email protected] 16 points 10 months ago

Yes.

It's deprecating old phone OS versions.

It's hardly new territory.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Judging by the article and the code snippets found, it's more about updating your phone rather than the car infotainment hub. Nougat is getting the axe, have to be on Oreo or later.
It would have been better if the headline said "phones" and not "devices", but that's not as panic inducing :P

[–] [email protected] -3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, but the problem is Android Auto is a closed system. There's no reason my phone can't display an app or play plex music while providing directions.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

It's the same kind of deprecation you get with apps requiring a newer Android version. If Google adds new features to Android Auto that Android Nougat (7.x) can't handle, then your apps won't have any better time either. Likewise, if Google updates Android Auto but an app stops supporting 7.x and earlier, then that app will certainly break down the road.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 10 months ago

Right, I don't want any sort of deprication for an app I need to use to navigate in my car. Why would anyone ever want or accept that?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

That's the neat part, you don't. That's a feature not a bug.