Android Auto no longer works on some older smartphones: Google imposes the rules

This doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it’s good to be aware of it. Let’s talk about the fact that Android Auto has minimum requirements that Google has decided to enforce more strictly, so much so that someone may have received a message that their phone is no longer supported. To be precise, Android Auto requires the paired smartphone to have at least Android 9.0 or higher. This restriction has been present for a few months, but only now does it seem to have become truly mandatory, with several users complaining of no longer being able to use the infotainment on their vehicle. Google has never communicated the reason for this choice, but perhaps the reason lies in the fact that, since Android 9, Android Auto is an integral part of Android, and therefore present at the system level in the smartphone .

That said, as of last spring, only 5.8% of Android Auto users were still using a version prior to Android 9, so the impact of this restriction affects a minority. After all, Android 8 was released on August 21, 2017, so we’re talking about more than 7 years ago: these are smartphones that haven’t received updates or security patches for a while, and for For that reason alone it might be worth replacing.