min-sdk greater than previous versions android

Question

I have an app which has been in the Play store for some years now and I have just built an update. The update takes advantage of numberpicker which has a min-sdk of 11 and is not catered for in v4 support library. Rather than create a custom backwards compatible numberpicker, I am inclined to release my new version and set the min-sdk to 11 in the manifest.

What then happens to my existing customers, many of whom have android versions pre-gingerbread? Will their phones automatically upgrade to my incompatible new version, or will they simply be filtered out of the update and continue to run the old version? While I don't mind them losing out on the update, I would not want them to lose the version they have. (I am not using the licensing library).

Answer 1

As long as you keep both APKs uploaded on Play, your existing customers will be able to get that version. They will not receive the new version as an update, if their software version is not compatible.

As a suggestion, if you're going to dump Gingerbread, I'd recommend dumping Honeycomb as well, and jump straight to API 14. Devices running API 11-13 are practically non-existent at this point (roughly 0.1% of the market at BEST, according to statistics here: http://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html).

EDIT: Actually, looking at that, you could probably jump to API 15, but I don't know that you gain anything between 14 and 15.

You can see exactly what changed between 14 and 15 here: http://developer.android.com/sdk/api_diff/15/changes.html