Why is it easier to update an app to a newer version on Android, but reverting it to a previous version is a hassle and even requires root?
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Imagine you have a nice little square table in your room. The table is often updated with nifty little things by your parents. They put a nice cover on it once, they fixed the leg when it was unstable, and they recently painted it blue!
Thing is, you preferred it’s natural wood color, so you ask your parents to turn it back to how it was. But the current version of the table is blue, can’t do anything about it.
You do have a copy of an earlier version of the table though, someone else with the same table made a copy and gave it to you. There are two options:
The table is not too senstive to this so you just remove the blue table and put the wood table in your room, and as long as your parents don’t come inside and see it, they won’t paint it blue to get it up to date.
This is equivalent to installing an earlier version of an offline program, no need to root your phone it just works from an apk.
The other option is if the previous version of the table has something that your parents don’t allow in the room anymore, of if installing this modified version of the table requires some handywork usually not allowed in the room. They won’t let you put it in the room and it won’t work well if you force it in. So you install a lock in your room to keep your parents out from messing with your table, now you have permission to do anything you want in the room.
This is rooting your phone to install an app that needs some deeper functionality or access to install and function.
Rooting is essentially the process of bypassing some of the restrictions placed for the user, allowing you to use the hardware and opersting system for more than the default allows. This allows you to modify and homebrew apps, which is usually what you need to do when rolling back the version of an app to a previous one.
It isn’t a physical limitation as much as a design one. If app stores kept backups of previous versions they could allow you to download and install older versions of apps, but they don’t do this because storing it is unnecessary and most apps are connected to the internet anyway, meaning you will need the latest version to use the official version of that app.
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