Today, anyone can fire up an old Apple II or install Windows 1.0 on an old computer and see the full experience, but once Google cuts off login support, old versions of Android are dead.

Advertisementįurther Reading The (updated) history of AndroidThese devices have been obsolete for a while, so it's not a big deal for day-to-day usage, but Google's server shutdowns are a nightmare for preservationists. Users of these old devices could still sideload a third-party app store and find replacements for all the Google apps, but if you're a technical user and can't get a new device, there's a good chance you could load a whole new operating system with an aftermarket Android ROM. It's less than 0.2 percent of active devices, behind 14 other versions of Android. Google shows active user base breakdowns for Android versions in Android Studio, and Gingerbread has such a low device count that it doesn't even make the list. Really, these old Android versions have to die eventually because they're just too insecure. Any Google services wanting to allow sign-ins from those versions would have to conform to 2011-era security standards, which means turning off two-factor authentication (2FA) and enabling a special ' allow less-secure access' setting in your Google account. Further Reading Android 2.3 Gingerbread-Four years later, the OS just won’t dieThe individual Google apps started to be updatable through the Android Market/Play Store, but signing in to Google was still a system-level service and is frozen in time.

Play store log out