Both Apple and Google release a new major version of their mobile operating systems (iOS and Android) every year. Each of these releases adds new functionality and changes or even removes some older features. Pugpig ensures your apps will always work on the latest versions of iOS and Android, as well as on a number of previous versions, allowing you apps to work on devices that are several years old.

Generally, when we add support for a new version of an operating system, we also drop support for the oldest version we previously supported. You can see our list of currently supported operating systems here. For example, shortly after iOS 14 was released, we dropped support for iOS 10. Why do we do this?

1. Velocity

Every version of an operating system we support is a version we have to develop for, and a version we have to test against. We aim to strike a balance between supporting the vast majority of devices in use and the critically-important ability to quickly iterate on our products.

2. Compatibility

Pugpig integrates with a number of third-party services for push, analytics and more. These services provide us with SDKs which have their own minimum OS version support. Therefore, if you want to use an SDK that requires iOS 12+, your app is only going to be available on those versions.

3. Functionality

Major new OS versions often include new functionality that improves the performance of your app and the features we are able to offer. In order to take advantage of the new features we commonly need to "target" a recent version of the OS, in doing this, iOS or Android can also enforce a dropping of support as the new features are not available on older OS versions.

   4. Security

Operating system upgrades routinely include improvements that make communication between the device and other services more secure. This means that your data, sensitive or otherwise, is protected. It's critically important that we stay up to date with these developments, and don't allow users to become vulnerable through the use of out of date technology.

Other factors to note

1. Dropping support for an OS version does not mean your app will be removed from the devices of users who can't upgrade, simply that they'll receive no further app updates on that device.
2. Particularly on iOS, dropping support for a version of the OS does not necessarily entail losing any device support. For example iOS 12 was available to all devices that could receive iOS 11, and thus dropping iOS 11 would have minimal impact.
3. Our decisions always take into account the data we have access to. If we're able to support an OS version for a while longer than usual due to high usage numbers, we will, but this has to be weighed up against the reasons above.

More on this topic

How we prepare for new OS versions