What happens if I release an iPhone app update for fewer devices

Question

I have an app released on the app store. For some reasons I would like to release an update that will reduce the number of devices capable of running the app. Let's say I'm going to make the app available only to iPhone4.

The question is: what happens for all of the iPhone3 that have downloaded the app? Will they see the update onto the store? Will the app magically vanish from their phones? Will Apple reject the update?

Is there anyone with some experience with this?

Answer 1

So we just tried to send an app to the appstore that was an update. The original version supported all devices. This new version only supported 3GS and up.

Upon submitting, we got this message: "This bundle is invalid. The key UIRequiredDeviceCapabilities in the Info.plist may not contain values that would prevent this application from running on devices that were supported by previous versions."

So it looks like apple doesn't like developers doing this kind of thing.

Answer 2

Apple might reject your app, but if you don't state the removal of support for iPhone 3G or iPhone 3GS there should not be a problem. The version of the app will still be on the users device if they can't update. If an update is not support by there phone the system will tell them this, so no the app will not magically vanish.

But you might get really bad review in the app store if you this, you should make you accessible to as many users as possible.