Need Android SDK lower than supported, will Live Update work?

Appflow
1

Can I build Android build on-prem, and then do Live Update via appflow?

It is a generic question, and though I searched for it, might have missed it, so sorry if I did.

Context
Currently the Appflow build stacks support Android SDK Levels 27 and up, per Active Linux Versions

This is Android 8.1. It covers 91.3% of cumulative usage per Android API Levels .com. However, the adoption lags behind the global average in the geographies I need to serve. I need Android 5.1, 6 at best.

The qestion
My question is - can I build Android on-prem using the older stack, and still do web builds and therefore Live Updates using Appflow? Can I incorporate a reference to the Channel in my on-prem build somehow?

Here is the flow Iā€™d like to confirm would work.

Appflow Live Update Ionic Forum Question

2

Those are the versions you can use as targetSDK version (the SDK used to build your app), not the minSDK version (the minimum Android version your app will support). For targetSDK you should always try to use the latest available.

At this point you should be using SDK 32 as minimum targetSDK, the recommended would be SDK 33 as it will be required for Google Play submissions starting in August.

For the minSDK you can go as low as you want or your framework allows you, in Capacitor 5 you can use 22 as minimum (Android 5.1), and on cordova-android 12 you can use 24 as minimum (Android 7).

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