Android, all apps must be 64-bit by 2019
To impose it is Google, which has published a new post on the Android Developer blog in which announces the news.
Android supports 64-bit apps since 2015 with the release of Lollipop but, at least until today, has never required developers to use the most advanced instructions. The change will come in August 2019, when all the apps released on the official store will have 64-bit support.
This does not mean that they will have to abandon the compatibility with the 32-bit instructions, but at the limit, they will have to be compatible with both the present technologies.
In the post announcing the news, Google notes that in the near future, there will be devices that will support only 64-bit code, so it’s time for developers to switch to new instructions. The process for the transition to 64-bit will be gradual for developers: by August 2018, all new apps will need to be developed based on the Android APIs Oreo, while for existing ones, the timing required is November 2018.
The API requirement will change every year, requiring the next version of the available APIs from the previous year. The safety requirement that will arrive in the first few months of 2018 is also very interesting. The company will add ” a few metadata ” to each APK in order to more accurately verify the authenticity of the APK. Developers will not have to do anything to comply with this clause, but all the work will be done by Big G.
Imagine this metadata as a ” security seal “, Google wrote in the long post explaining the news in detail. Google has not been very busy with 64-bit, especially if we compare the timing of Android with those of iOS. Apple has started asking for 64-bit code for iOS apps from February 2015, while 32-bit support ended last September with iOS 11. However, the two platforms are very different.
While Apple is the one to control all the hardware proposed with iOS, the fragmentation of Android does not allow you to make certain changes quickly and painlessly for users. The change on the green robot could feed many news on Android: the transition to 64-bit will not bring a revolution in terms of performance, but more likely to bring lazy developers to update their apps remained unchanged for long periods.
