Google ends support for Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich

Android 4.0, called "Ice Cream Sandwich", was an exciting new product. It brought all the improvements to Honeycomb and, for the first time, a consistent visual style on Android. However, those days are long gone and 4.0-4.0.4 now makes up about 1% of the total Android user base.

Google announced today that Play Services, the platform that provides key APIs and enables the Play Store, will no longer support Ice Cream Sandwich in the future. Version 14.7.99 will be the last for Android 4.0-4.0.4 (API levels 14 and 15). Google advises developers to update their apps to at least API level 16, as the number of devices using API levels 14 and 15 (which Ice Cream Sandwich supports) is minimal.

Devices running ICS should still function as usual for a while, but now that they're stuck with an unmaintained version of Play Services, features including access to the Google Play Store, Gmail, Google Maps, data syncing, and more may start to break down in the coming months. In fact, most of them no longer work. 

Google also recommends that all new and existing app developers not enable support for Ice Cream Sandwich due to a lack of security updates or bug fixes in the Google Play Store and Google Play Services. The most recent version of Android that new and existing apps should target is Jelly Bean and Kitkat.

There are also a number of e-readers running on Android that use ICS. This includes models from Icarus, Energy Sistem, Onyx and a number of older tablets still in use, such as the Kobo ARC and Barnes and Noble Nook HD, HD+ and Nook Color.