One of the biggest problems that we have always criticized Android is its great fragmentation . Tim Cook warned during the conference of Apple developers this year – listen to our podcast where we analyze everything that happened in WWDC 19 – and that Android, despite all its constant improvements, is still a very fragmented operating system .
At the beginning of the month of May and after a period of 6 months without updating the statistics, Google returned to present us the distribution data of Android leaving a bleak picture . Such is the problem of fragmentation for users, which is beginning to affect the most popular applications and games. In this case the harmed is Pokémon GO and is that Niantic has just announced that its popular video game will stop working on devices with older Android versions .
Pokémon GO will stop working on smartphones with Android 4.4 KitKat
Any Pokémon trainer who wants to continue enjoying his favorite application will have to update his smartphone. This has been confirmed by Niantic in his official Twitter account . As of July 1, Pokémon GO will only support devices with Android Lollipop versions and later .
Android users: Ingress and Pokémon GO will be discontinuing support for Android 4 KitKat after July 1, 2019. We encourage you to update their operating systems to Android 5 or above for uninterrupted access to Ingress and Pokémon GO. See in-game help for more information.
— Niantic Support (@NianticHelp) 17 de junio de 2019
Android 4.4 KitKat was introduced during 2013. Despite this and according to the statistics presented by Google, there are still many users who maintain this version , either because the brands have never updated their terminals or because of the impossibility of changing their terminal for a more recent one.
Regardless of all this, Niantic has been very clear. Do you want to continue playing Pokémon GO this summer on your Android smartphone? Well, nothing about KitKat, it’s time to update .