field note 03

The Android version I still test on first

A report this week put a number on something every phone tester feels. Devices still on Android 11 apparently outnumber devices on Android 17 by roughly ten times. I read that twice, because the drawer next to my desk tells the same story.

Three of the handsets I use for comparison runs are stuck on old releases. One sits on Android 12, one on 11, and one has not received an update since 2023. None of them are broken. They are just no longer worth a vendor's update budget.

So the version floor is the first thing I look at before I call a build stable. If a feature only behaves on the newest release, I note which of those three phones it breaks on. That short list has caught more real problems than any benchmark score.

Written on a keyboard, no affiliate links, no sponsored units.