What Android version to target?

Posted by Richard Eng on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Richard Eng
Published on 2011-12-01T00:59:40Z Indexed on 2011/12/01 1:52 UTC
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I'm about to write my first Android app. It's a fairly basic app that doesn't use any special features beyond being able to schedule notifications and read/write image files to the device's local storage. Reaching the broadest audience is my top priority. If I target Android 1.5, is the app guaranteed to run fine all the way up to ICS? Should I target Android 2.1, which seems to be the new baseline for common phones in use?

Since the app is fairly basic, if I target ICS, would it run on versions going all the way back to 2.1? Maybe this is a stupid question.

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