Some android apps incompatible

asked 2019-03-20 09:13:24 +0300

Charles36
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updated 2019-03-22 07:29:47 +0300

Hello everyone.Some android apps are incompatible with device.Play store shows that this app is incompatible to your device.Why so?And what is the solution to it mybkexperience

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What device / Sailfish ver. etc? If you're Sailfish X on Xperia X, alien dalvik version is the key for many apps

Sakke ( 2019-03-20 09:26:01 +0300 )edit

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This happens to me for several utility-related apps, e. g. My Vodafone Italy or the Enel app. I can't figure out the reason for the incompatibility since Play Store won't reveal it.

Giacomo Di Giacomo ( 2019-03-20 10:04:34 +0300 )edit

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answered 2019-03-20 13:22:37 +0300

pakman
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There are several possible reasons, but as @Sakke comments above, the most likely one is that the apps require a newer version of Android than the Android emulation available on your device. If you are using a device other than the XA2, you will not be able to run any apps that require Android 5.0 or later.

There is no fix for this. You have the following options:

Use the service via a web browser if available (you may find that an Android browser like Firefox or Brave works better than the Sailfish browser for many sites)
Switch to an XA2 and use the Android support (still in Beta, so expect some glitches)
Drop Sailfish, and revert to Android (or an AOSP variant like LineageOS if your device supports it). Or get a second Android/Apple phone to run the apps you need. Note that a few apps will not work on LineageOS - they detect that they are not running under Google Android or check for an unlocked bootloader and refuse to start.
Wait until Jolla upgrade their Android support for your device (but this may never happen, and if it does it could take months/years).

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In my case none of the incompatible apps requires an Android version above 4.4.

Giacomo Di Giacomo ( 2019-03-20 13:26:09 +0300 )edit

@Giacomo Di Giacomo: what device are you using? Maybe your Alien Dalvik emulation is even older, say at 4.1 or something. This thread says how you can find out the version you are at, if you are happy to use the terminal. My guess is that the Play Store just checks the sdk number against what the app is using, and says "incompatible" if your phone's is lower.

If you are feeling brave, you could try downloading the APK and installing it by hand but you may have a "suboptimal experience" ;)

pakman ( 2019-03-20 18:15:18 +0300 )edit

@pakman Xperia X, until yesterday when it died. Just got an XA2, I will test it and flash it in the coming days. Of course I was at 4.4.

Giacomo Di Giacomo ( 2019-03-20 18:40:51 +0300 )edit

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answered 2019-03-22 10:58:20 +0300

nas
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Well, I was helping on testing a friend who was building a quite simple app for Android. Before summer 2019 the app was working fine, he was making it with support for android 4.4 . But then he upgraded his SDK, he mentioned something about "kotlin" (not sure what exactly is), and then even his apk was supposed to be compatible with android 4.4, I could make it install but could not run it on my SailfishX- it was crashing on every run. I noticed that also with 2 - 3 apps that I upgraded, that they were supporting android 4.4, but couldn't run - I had to downgrade them.

I was expecting grater android version support for XperiaX, but still, Sailfish OS is the best mobile OS for me and my needs.

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Kotlin is a programing language, which among other things is used as an alternative to Java for developing Android apps. I guess your friend started using it for his app.

There are several reasons why an app that targets Android 4.4 will start on Alien Dalvik but then crash. Probably the main one is that it relies something from Google Play Services and when it finds the requirement missing it crashes. This doesn't cause all apps to crash: some will just pop up a warning but continue to run, possibly with some functionality not working. It is hard to generalise about this: some apps work, some don't, and some stop working when upgraded to a newer version that needs something that is not available on SFOS/Alien Dalvik.

pakman ( 2019-03-22 16:16:05 +0300 )edit

Some android apps incompatible

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