Android Auto will soon stop working on older devices

What's getting yanked is that older phones won't connect to Android Auto enabled vehicles if the phone is running Android Nougat. It must be Running Android Oreo or later.
For those not remembering, Nougat was released in 2016 and went out of support in 2019. By the most recent metric (Dec. 2022) about 4% of all Android devices currently run Nougat. So this will affect all fifteen of the people still running this OS.
Most devices that were originally sold with Nougat have an upgrade path to Oreo. The bigger problem is folks who purchased devices with Marshmallow (orig. 2015) or Lollipop (orig. 2014) who stopped receiving upgrades past Nougat. These are the devices that will most likely be impacted by this change.
Personally, I like to keep my devices for at least five years, so them deprecating 2016 and earlier is okay with me.
- On the one hand: I don't see a reason for Google to keep supporting old versions.
  On the other hand: pushing an update to an old device and sabotaging it by showing an "install updates" popup (as if that's even possible for devices still running Android 7, that's bullshit) is just dickish.
  The old version of Android Auto works perfectly fine. Show a popup once if you want ("your device will no longer receive Android Auto updates, third party apps may stop working") but don't actually disable anything that's working perfectly fine.
  Google pulled that shit before. I would understand if they had a customer support department that'd get flooded when newer hardware stopped working, but all Google has is a forum that no Google employees ever pay any attention to.
  
  The issue is they probably want to change serverside stuff without caring about the old stuff and the alternative to the update and it's prompt is that it will simply crash, show errors, hang or whatever....
- We need to get to a point where smartphone work for more than 5 years. Hardware wise the battery is the only part that is guaranteed to need to be replaced.
  Now whether they do it by stopping the race on Android version or supporting every device is up to them.
  Desktop OS (Windows or Linux) support any version as long as the PC is powerful enough. Why on phone we're limited not by the capabilities of the CPU but its release date?
- I don't think you understand how percentage works.
- All 120 million, actually.
  
  How many of them have a compatible car, and are using it?
- The odds are as lot of those devices aren't even phones.
- Damn, android os versions sound so tasty.
- What's this is version numbers? I don't know if this whimsical naming thing works for other brains but between android, debian, R, etc, etc, it no longer registers for me...

Why hasn't someone made an open-source implementation of the Android Auto client?
We already have open-source implementations of the AA head unit, and we have the AAwireless project.
I'd be kinda cool to run Android Auto on a Linux phone.
- be the change you want to see in the world
  
  I kinda want to tbh, seems like an interesting project, but the whole thing seems really complicated and I might hit a road block with client certification.

You can probably just disable auto updates for Android Auto and the apps you use with it, but inevitably things will start breaking, like Play Services APIs that Android Auto relies on, or the APIs those older third-party apps you use rely on.
It sucks, but it was kinda inevitable for a system that has so many moving parts.
- For Android auto you can't really disable automatic updates as it checks by itself and refuses to run if it's too much outdated

A forced nag screen "please buy a new phone to continue" seems shitty, can't they just stop targeting that specific android version instead of bricking the functionality with an automatic update?
I don't see the issue of using an older version of Android auto on an older phone, just stop getting new features...

This makes no sense to me. How do these two devices that are currently working together stop functioning? Does it require updating/auto updating the software on your phone to kill it? Seems ridiculous.
Or is this saying newer head units installed in cars might require a newer version of Android Auto that won’t work on an older phone OS?
- This looks to be Google ending support for the Android Auto framework on older Android versions, that's all. It's not about the car, it's about the phone.
  
  So if you don’t update your phone, it continues to work? But if I buy a new phone, it won’t work with the older car?
  
  I mean, Android Auto runs on your phone and just transmits the video/audio to your car so yeah. It's just like any other app dropping support for older versions of the OS.
- Maybe read the article?
  Software updates and eventually you have to stop supporting older versions of Android. Apps do it all the time. Dropping support for Android 7.0 going into 2024 seems reasonable (it's only a couple percent of the total market).
- I think a combination. Newer cars will require newer phones, older cars probably won't support newer phones. If I had an older car I may keep an old phone and hotspot it or something.
  Or 3rd party radio
  
  I have a wireless CarPlay dongle for my car and I wonder if that could get around it.
  Especially it simulates a wired CarPlay connection to the car, even if your device is Android Auto.

Ok so how do I replace the system in my car? Mitsubishi Outlander 2015 Sport.
- Perhaps I misunderstand, but isn't this talking about the Android version of the phone that you're using connected to use Android Auto?
  
  Yes.
  It's deprecating old phone OS versions.
  It's hardly new territory.
  
  It is, but Android Auto sucks anyway. I want to replace it with something that isn't a walled garden that can be bricked by an OS update.
- Judging by the article and the code snippets found, it's more about updating your phone rather than the car infotainment hub. Nougat is getting the axe, have to be on Oreo or later.
  It would have been better if the headline said "phones" and not "devices", but that's not as panic inducing :P
  
  Yeah, but the problem is Android Auto is a closed system. There's no reason my phone can't display an app or play plex music while providing directions.
- That's the neat part, you don't. That's a feature not a bug.