Older versions of Chrome on Android?

[dandv]

Just curious about the status of Android Chrome versions < 59. I see here that caniuse had Chrome 57 displayed at one point. Other browsers show a significant number of past versions, while Chrome on Android shows none.

[Fyrd]

Written about this before, but I can't find the comment. My mistake for failing to put it in a centralized place!

So here's the reasoning:

1. I prefer not to include browser versions that I'm unable to test, and while old desktop versions are fairly easy to come by, old mobile versions are not (old iOS versions are on browserstack, but not chrome)
2. A large percentage of features are supported on Chrome for desktop anyway, so for historical information that tends to match up. For occasional exceptions notes can be added.
3. I don't currently have an easy way to get browser usage of different Chrome for Android versions, so that would wind up being inaccurate.
4. The site is currently set up to load all data in one go, so adding a ton more versions is not good for that. I'm actually in the process of changing this to better support larger amounts of data, so this argument will go away.

All of that said, I would still like to add them anyway at some point because the browser has huge usage and it'd be helpful to have that better covered. But that list's the reason they're not there yet.

[dandv]

How about getting older browser versions from apkmirror? It's safe and if you're paranoid, I can provide SHA-1's for binaries (I work at Google).

[GitToTheHub]

Hi, i realized that the minimum Chrome and Android Browser Version is equal when you compare them on MDN. See #5074 last comment.

[jpmedley]

For the most part. There are a few edge cases where they are not. I've managed to keep Chrome engineers on top for this for about the last 30 or so versions of Chrome. For that reason you can rely on Chrome Status for differences. The most likely places they are to be different is when a web feature has an underlying device hardware dependency. I'm having trouble finding an example just now, but keep an eye out.

[GitToTheHub]

Ok, thanks for the explanation. So it's ok to compare it on basic stuff but can differ in using some Hardware-APIs. I saw the Notifications API is enabled for Desktop but not for mobile, when i follow your link from the other issue. Thanks :)

[MuhammedZakir]

This is what I currently understand -

#5613 (comment):

Are we tracking whether specific versions support a feature or not? As opposed to how MDN does - tracking the first version to support a feature? Is that how it is?

Yes, exactly!

However,

#5613 (comment):

I take first version marked as "yes" for a feature as the first version of that browser to support it. When someone checks compatibility table, I think that's what they would expect too. So wouldn't this just confuse users? [...]

So I think, at the very least, we should add the first version of a browser to support a feature to its compatibility table.

[dfabulich]

It's been years since there's been a comment here, but since @Fyrd's last comment, there's been a change in the release strategy of Chrome for Android that makes the current representation of the data outright misleading.

In Oct 2021, Chrome began annually unsupporting old versions of Android. The last version of Chrome to support Android 5.0 Lollipop was v95 in Oct 2021. The last version of Chrome to support Android 6.0 Marshmallow was v106 in Sep 2022. And although today Android 7.0 Nougat supports the latest Chrome v113, it seems likely that Chrome will stop supporting Android 7.0 in Q3 2023.

This Wikipedia table shows Android versions and the last supported version of Chrome for that Android version. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Google_Chrome_release_compatibility

Android version	Chrome Version	Chrome Release Years
7.0 and later	113	2016–
6.0	106	2015–2022
5.x	95	2014–2021
4.4	81	2013–2020
4.1-4.3 (ARMv7,IA-32,x64)	71	2012–2019
4.0 (ARMv7,IA-32)	42	2012–2015

Now, StatCounter doesn't provide a breakdown of Android browser-version market share, but they do provide OS-level market share numbers for Android 5 and 6, and they're non-trivial. Android 6 has 1.67% share https://gs.statcounter.com/android-version-market-share/ Those users can't possibly use Chrome for Android v113, and really ought to count against its market share, somehow.

I can't figure out how to download the data for this chart, but there's also an ominous "Other" dotted line there, that seems to clock in at around 3.5% share. So the Chrome for Android v113 total on caniuse is likely wrong by at least 5 points.

I don't really think this is currently something that Fyrd can fix on caniuse's end, but I think it's now more important than ever to apply pressure to StatCounter to provide Android browser version market share data, and to incorporate that data into caniuse.

Caniuse is just wrong right now, by a significant degree IMO, and the magnitude of the error will increase over time as Chrome continues to desupport old versions of Android.