Support for Google Play Services will disappear from Android Jelly Bean, Google has announced in a post on its official blog.
The natural cycle of technology is fulfilled once again. Android Jelly Bean will be without support for one of Android’s basic services. This version of Google’s mobile operating system appeared in 2012, lasted a year, and is no longer present in almost any Android phone.
The latest data shared by Google reports that Android Jelly Bean has a presence of less than 1% on Android smartphones. This and other reasons are what has led Google to decide to remove support for Google Play Services.
It sounds dramatic and, in the end, it is. By losing support for Google Play Services all added features that are not dependent on the Android version will not make it to Android Jelly Bean. The problem is that this version of Android does not have the minimum API to support Google Play Services.
Google’s blog comments that the minimum at present to have access to these services is API 19. Jelly Bean lasted a year, but it was updated three times in terms of APIs. It started in version 16 and reached API 18. It was just a step away from having this support.
What does it mean for the user to lose this support? The most drastic thing is that no new versions of Google Services will arrive on the mobile device with Jelly Bean. The applications will work until they need a new version of these services and it will be at that moment that the device will not be able to make them work, since it will not have the necessary update.
The date that Google has marked in the calendars for the end of support for Google Play Services in Android Jelly Bean is in August this year. In less than a month phones almost without functionalities will become even more unusable.
