New versions of Chrome will not work on smartphones with Android 7

In the description of the recent release of Chrome 119 on the Google technical support site discovered bad news for users of smartphones and tablets with an older version of the system: starting with Chrome 120, the browser will no longer support Android 7 and 7.1 (Nougat).

Although Android 7 was introduced back in 2016, as of October 2023 on Android 7.0 and 7.1 work 2.6% of Android devices. This sounds modest, but it’s important to consider that the number of active Android users in the world is approximately 3.6 billion. It turns out that 93.6 million users will lose access to new Chrome features.

Chrome 120 is expected to release on December 6th, which is when browser support for Android Nougat will end. Users will receive a notification to upgrade to a newer OS version.