Was able to follow Zwifters in the morning of Thursday, January 26, 2023 and give them “Ride On”. Then in the afternoon, the Zwift app on my android indicated an Update needed to be installed. Pressed on Update which brought me to Google Play which indicated “This app isn’t compatible with your device anymore.” Pressing the Open button returns to the Update page. I can’t get into Companion at all.
I know my phone is too old to run all the features of Companion and was okay with me. But i was still able to follow my Favorite Zwifters. Now I can’t even do that. I know Zwift needs to provide Updates to install the latest features and that technology does advance.
But why shut me completely out. I can not use Companion at all unless I get another phone.
This doesn’t seem right to me. It would be great if Zwift bought back this ability to use Companion on older Androids.
Sure. Now, are you happy to pay a “legacy” device premium for it to be maintained and checked each time Zwift is updated.
I think your only option for older devices that can’t run Android 9+ is to seek out a custom ROM such as LineageOS to update it. If you do a google search for your phone model, plus “xda lineageos”, you may find a link to a ROM for your phone. Not all phones will have a custom ROM available, and it’s a bit work to install it, plus it may result in a non-working phone, so buyer beware.
I imagine that Zwift don’t want to test Companion releases on ancient operating systems. Testing is already a challenge for them. Better communication about the change would have helped a lot.
The deprication of older versions happened a long time ago so not entirely sure why this issue has arisen now.
I’m afraid like many (myself included) you’ll have to look at upgrading your device.
A custom ROM may work but i tried it on my old phone i used purely for ZCA and it didn’t work. Just hung at the blue Zwift screen.
I experienced exactly the same issue yesterday… even though my Samsung Galaxy S7 is a bit older, all other apps work fine, so I’m not willing to buy another phone. Would be nice if Zwift would work on it, like providing a light version of the app…?
I had the s7 too.
I changed to an s10 which has been great and you can pick them up cheaply now given the fact Samsung bring a new model out every other week.
It is likely that this is the first time since August that your app was updated and your device was deemed too old at that time, but as you hadn’t updated recently it’s only now that it’s been deemed too old.