Google might kill Chrome support for Android devices running on Jelly Bean

Some recent reports suggest that Google will now stop supporting Chrome on smartphones which are running on Android Jelly Bean. The Chrome Android app on Android Jellybean will not receive any life support from the software giant according to XDA developers.

An estimated 32 million devices run the Jelly Bean version of Android, the XDA developers recently reported that a minimum API level for Chrome browser app will be increased from 4.1 to 4.4. In simpler terms, this means that Android devices powered by Jelly Bean will no longer be able to avail the services of the most popular web browser on the Internet.

Currently 3.2% devices in the world run Jelly Bean (4.1 to 4.3), since approximately 1 Billion devices in the world run Google’s open source code, about a whopping 32 million devices will be affected by this change. So, devices that are running on Android 4.4 KitKat or higher will receive Chrome Support. However, this doesn’t mean that devices running on Jelly Bean will still be able to access the Internet, they’ll just not be able to update Google Chrome from the Play store.

Google hasn’t yet announced any timeline for any of this, in fact there hasn’t been any announcement from Google at all. This information was extracted from Chrome’s code.