Ionic 3 / Cordova : Build an app which being supported by all android versions from 2.0 to 7.0

I start developping with Ionic, so I installed the lastest versions of Ionic and Cordova.

Cordova : 8.0.0
Ionic : 3.19.1
In the Cordova Documentation there is a mapping between cordova versions and android API Levels:

cordova | API-Levels| Equivalent Android Version
6.X.X | 16 - 25 | 4.1 - 7.1.1
5.X.X | 14 - 23 | 4.0 - 6.0.1
4.1.X | 14 - 22 | 4.0 - 5.1
4.0.X | 10 - 22 | 2.3.3 - 5.1
3.7.X | 10 - 21 | 2.3.3 - 5.0.2
Documentation Link: https://cordova.apache.org/docs/en/latest/guide/platforms/android/index.html

When I start to test my first App in the different android version,

Android 5 : OK

Android 2.3 : NOK (Error in Android Studio when running the app in my real device : the minSdk supported = 16 > your device sdk (10)

So I’m asking if want that my application been supported by all android versions from android 2.0.0 to android 7.0.0, What I have to do ?

Thank you for your support

Errrr. I’m not really sure why you’d want to do this, particularly considering that 2.0 only has 0.3% market share, but beyond that I don’t know if there’s really a way to do this,.

Thank you @SingmundFroyd for your reply,

If there is no solution to cover them, I want to know if the Android native developers will have the same issue when developing the solution with Android ?

Yes and no. You could do it (as far as I know), but it’ll be a bit of a management nightmare. You’d have to have so much backwards compatibility code that I’d imagine it’s not really feasible. Unless it’s a simple app at least.

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I’d be surprised if anyone did it, anywhere in the world. So little is supported before Android 4. You might have to build a separate code base just for the early operating systems.

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I’d say if a client is asking you to support Android versions going back to 2.x, they’re probably very misguided about what that entails and how much that would be worth. As @SigmundFroyd implied, there would be so much backwards compatibility code to manage that it would basically be like developing two or three additional apps in one. But more importantly, there’s no way the effort would be worth the time, even if each potential user has a monetary value. There may be 0.3% of devices running Android 2.x, but that in no way should be read to mean those users will actually download your app or, I strongly suspect, any apps at all. When a phone is that old and that deprecated, it’s almost certainly used for phone calls, text messages, and very little else. It would be like building a new desktop app that supports Windows 98. There are Windows 98 computers still kicking around, but you don’t need (and probably can’t get) those users.

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