Popular Android app to end support for millions of phones - are you affected?

If you regularly use your smartphone to help you navigate through traffic and find the best routes, you might soon not be getting all the newest features via free software updates as usual. Waze, the popular navigation app owned by Google, is ending app support for millions of Android devices, meaning you could be affected.

As spotted by Android Authority, one of the newest Android app versions of Waze requires your device to be running Android 10 or newer, meaning very soon, new features and bug fixes won’t be downloadable for you if you’re using Waze on a phone or tablet running Android 9 or older.

This will also apply to any in-car infotainment or navigation screens that happen to run Android.

It doesn’t mean that Waze will stop working on your device if it can’t get updates, but you’ll miss out on new features as they roll out, and you might find the app slowly becomes less reliable.

Waze has proven a very popular alternative to Google Maps despite being acquired by Google in 2013. It has very different graphics and is used mostly for real-time traffic and hazard updates that are crowd sourced from Waze users. It also has useful features such as fuel price comparisons and more customisation than Google Maps.

The change to only supporting Android 10 and newer currently applies to the beta version of Waze, which is a preview version some people opt into so they can see the newest features and updates before anyone else. However, changes like this appearing on a beta version of an app heavily hint at what is to come for the general release version.

As there are billions of Android devices in use worldwide, this means there are likely millions of phones, tablets and other devices out there that are still running Android 9 - even though Android 10 was released in September 2019.

Android manufacturers have got much better in recent years at supporting their devices with software updates years past release, but back at the tailend of the 2010s it was quite common for Android phones and tablets to only get one or two Android version updates, and sometimes none at all.

So, if you’re using a quite old phone, first of all, good on you for not needlessly upgrading your phone every year. But if it is indeed still running Android 9 - even if you don’t use Waze - it might be time to think about getting a new phone, as you will be lagging behind significantly on app and system security fixes, which could leave you at risk from online fraud.