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?
In: 20
Android apps are designed to be updated to either the newest version, or inside a range of acceptable versions in the case of apps that force you to upgrade before allowing you to continue. The reason that you can always upgrade but hardly downgrade is because of breaking changes that would affect resources the app uses. For example, say you updated from version 1.0 to 2.0, the app’s local storage schema underwent changes that make it incompatible with old versions of the app. If you downgrade back to 1.0, the database is effectively broken. It’s often these sorts of changes that make downgrading packages undesirable for the average user.
Other reasons could be security compliance, critical bug fixes, or changing target API to a newer target as part of Play Store guidelines (this is actually going on right now for app developers)
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