If you are one of those who like to hold onto their gadgets for as long as possible before making the jump to something new, you may want to consider it time if you have an older Android device. Google has announced that it is ending support for its own apps on a number of older devices. This will include sign-in support for apps like Gmail, YouTube, Google Photos, Google Maps, and more.
This will affect any Android device that is Android 2.3.7 (Gingerbread) or below. These devices will be met with errors if the user attempts to sign in to any of these apps.
The change will come next month (September 27th, 2021), so you have some time to make a decision. Thankfully, the chance of having one of these devices is pretty low. It would be incredibly difficult for a device to have lasted this long since many other developers have already cut support to much older versions of the OS.
It is ok to fall a little behind when it comes to upgrading your mobile devices. However, you don’t want to fall too far behind since there is the question of security and support that falls into place pretty quickly. Manufacturers usually only support their devices for so many years with updates. If you allow too much time to go by, these updates would stop being delivered leaving you open to certain security risks that exist in the world (which are a lot sadly).
Despite this, these older devices can still be used for certain tasks. Repurposing them for touch-interactive remotes for devices, for example. As long as they do not depend on having to be connected to the internet, you can still find options to squeeze everything you can out of them. You could also jailbreak the device (at your own discretion) as a learning experience.
