Google Ends Support for Android 4.4 KitKat – Millions of Devices Will Be Affected

The Android KitKat platform was first released about 10 years ago, and now its life cycle has come to an end - since August, Google has completely stops her support.

And it's not about the lack of new security patches - for this OS they stopped coming out back in October 2017 - but about the unavailability of updates to the Google Play Services library. This service is needed for the operation of not only branded Gmail, YouTube and the Google Play store, but also for many third-party applications. Some of them will stop updating, while others will simply not work.

As of July 2023, the number of active devices on Android 4.4 KitKat is less than 1%. It would seem that this is very little, but on a general scale, this is a huge number of gadgets - about 15-25 million. And this is not only smartphones, but also tablets and e-readers.

Users of such devices will either have to update the system, if an update is available for them, or finally replace the gadget with a more recent one.