Android OS 2.3.x and 3.x support is ending soon

Hey, if the Galaxy S was good enough for the Apostle Paul, it's good enough for me.

Oh, well... I don't need any updates to Vyrso 4.3.x but will downloading of resources be impacted in the future? What else may be impacted?

When the resource driver/compiler version increases, the mobile apps need to be updated to support the new version. If the mobile apps aren't updated, then any resources that have been updated/compiled with the new version will no longer work on mobile. If the resource driver version were to be updated, say, tomorrow, I'd think there's a pretty good chance we'd update the apps for 2.3.x one more time to support the new driver version. If it's updated a few months from now...a mobile update seems less likely. Eventually, yes, new resource downloads/updates will stop working.

The whole Android update thing is a contentious issue on many hardware sites.

Couldn't you stretch the compatibility cycle to at least 5 years instead? Is there anything preventing a non-graphical app from doing that?

The jump from Android 2.3 to Android 4.0 was probably the biggest change Android has ever experienced. There are many new developer APIs and ways of doing things in Android 4.0+ that just aren't available in Android 2.3. There are several support libraries that let some of this new functionality work on 2.3 devices (and this is the approach Logos has taken until now) but they are buggy and don't provide a great experience for anyone (developers or users). The older devices just aren't capable of handling many of the newer features.

As an example of the cost of developing for Android 2.3, look at this screenshot:

These two dropdown items should show the icons for note documents and reading plan documents next to the menu items. It took me about 10 minutes to get that working on Android 4.0+, but then it didn't work (and was causing crashes!) on Android 2.3, even though all the documentation said that this should work on that platform. I spent an entire day trying to figure out why the icons weren't showing up before eventually tracking it down to a bug in the Android 2.3 source code. I ended up having to remove the icons on all platforms to fix the crashing on Android 2.3. If we didn't support Android 2.3, this task would have taken 10 minutes and looked nicer, but instead it took an entire work day.

That's just one example, I'm sure we could come up with countless others if we tried. Considering the very small percentage of our users running Android 2.3, we've reached the point where the cost exceeds the benefit. It's worth noting that Google hasn't updated any of their apps on Android 2.3 for (at least) several months now.

The problem that I see here is with e-ink devices which mainly still run Android 2.x. I've seen a few Android 4.x devices, but all of them seem to be hugely overpriced.

I'd be fine being stuck with an old version of the app; but not being able to get new resources is not a very bright outlook at all. :-(