Phenquestions
If you are running an Android device with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and use the Chrome browser on it, you may want to switch to another browser soon as Google just announced that it will not support the browser after the release of Chrome 42 for that version of the operating system.
While that does not mean that you cannot use the browser anymore, the most recent version of it will still work on the device, it means that Google won't release any updates for it after Chrome 43 is released.
Updates include feature updates but also the important security and stability updates. This in turn means that vulnerabilities discovered in Chrome will not be patched for the system anymore as it stands right now.
Google has created a FAQ page on the Chromium Projects website detailing the changes.
According to Google, the reason for the change is that the number of Ice Cream Sandwich devices is dropping, and that it takes considerable effort to support these devices with Chrome updates.
Not only do changes need to be tested against Ice Cream Sandwich's codebase, it is also often necessary to use workarounds due to API restrictions.
The change affects 5.9% of all devices running Android according to Google's Android developer dashboard which is almost twice as much as devices running Lollipop currently.
It is clear that these numbers will change in the coming months and that Ice Cream Sandwich use will drop further when users start to update their devices or buy new ones that support newer versions.
One option for users of affected devices is to switch to Firefox for Android which supports all versions of Android starting with version 2.3. While that is likely going to change as well in the future, Mozilla has not made any announcements in this regard until now.
Chrome for Android is currently available as version 40 which means that users have still some time left before making the switch to another browser on their device.
Tip: You can check the version of Android that you are running in the settings and there on about phone to display its version and other information about it.
To check the version of Chrome, load chrome://version in the browser to display the information.
