Ionic 4 and android 4+ support

Ionic Framework
1

So ionic 4 works great on android 7+… now releasing an app for only that market means loosing pretty much 25% of the mobile audience.

Now, the only limitation I see is the webview… Actually if crosswalk would be actively maintained, this problem wouldn’t exist. I understand the app size would be considerable bigger, but is that a real issue?

So couple of questions:

  • Is it possible to ship chrome 7x something with my ionic 4 app? I’ve been looking at crosswalk alternatives but I couldn’t find any. How hard would be to have that implemented for IOS / Android?
  • What are people doing out there? Not switching to ionic 4 yet? WPA is out of the question for me because my APP is mostly offline and need a lot of cordova plugins for file management.
  • Is there a way to make Android 4+/5/6 to upgrade their default webview so that Ionic4 will work?

Any advice?

2

Nobody has an answer? :frowning:

3

Devices with old Android have old hardware. To me main problem is this. Because some of my clients can run my app on Android 5 but some of them say it does not work on 6, newer one. I don’t think there is a solution for this situation. :confused:

4

For me … the main problem is the webview implementation… Get an Android 4 or 5 device… install google chrome and open a WPA ionic app… it works just fine.

So why is it that there is no option to ship a webview as part of the ionic app… Even from the consistency point of view between Android versions that should be a must… Although I’m sure there are reasons I don’t know because for me is a clear logic move to make Ionic more robust…