Support for Android 8?

[sphh]

I noticed that Zulip on Android requires at least Android 9.

Do you consider to support Android 8?

[gnprice]

Thanks for the feedback.

In general we don't have the resources to actively support very old OS versions. Here's our overall policy for which OS versions we support (it's in the repo for the legacy app, but still applies to the current app):
https://github.com/zulip/zulip-mobile/blob/main/docs/architecture/platform-versions.md

In this case, though, it looks like the app might actually work on Android 8 if we were to edit the metadata to say it requires Android 8, instead of Android 9. The reason we increased the minimum is here:
#mobile-team > flutter: Java versions? @ 💬
We weren't sure whether things would break on older Android versions, and just didn't have a device older than Android 9 to test on.

If you'd like to test, I could post a build in this thread with just that bit of metadata edited. If that works for you on your Android 8 device, then I think we could merge that change so it'd appear in our next release (generally within a couple of weeks).

[sphh]

Thanks for considering adding the support for Android 8. I am happy to test it!

[gnprice]

@sphh Posted at #1901 — please try it out and let us know how it goes!

(Mentioned you there yesterday, but repeating here because I know GitHub notifications can be pretty chaotic.)

[sphh]

Thanks. I now downloaded, installed and started it. I logged into my chat and I did not experience any errors yet. That's promising!

I still have to test sending messages, receiving notifications (what system does it use?).

One thing I noticed: The setting page shows just 4 entries:

• THEME
• Open links with in-app browser
• Open message feeds at …
• Mark messages as read on scroll …

Should there be more entries? (My phone often has problems showing all entries. That's not a problem of Android 8 but of my tiny screen with just 240×432px!)

[gnprice]

Hmm, good question! We should make that scrollable, but it looks like it currently isn't. I just filed #1904.

The good news is that there's only one more entry beyond those, and it's not important: "Experimental features", which currently leads to just one experimental feature flag (and which in general is only useful for developing or testing those in-progress features).

[sphh]

Sending messages works as well.

I did not receive a notification for the new message. Should a notification be displayed when receiving a new message or is this not implemented at all?

[gnprice]

Yes, the app has notifications 🙂

If you're not seeing notifications, try the troubleshooting steps here and see if those resolve the issue:
https://zulip.com/help/mobile-notifications#testing-mobile-notifications
https://zulip.com/help/mobile-notifications#troubleshooting-mobile-notifications

[sphh]

If I read these articles correctly, Zulip uses the Google Push Service. No wonder, I don't get any notifications, because I have switched that off …