Summary
- Android Auto now requires Android 9+; Android 8.0 devices can no longer install updates.
- Android 8.0/8.1 make up about 4% of active devices; most phones sold in last 6 years run 9+.
- If you use Android Auto on Android 8.0, update to 9+ or buy a newer phone.
The thing about sticking with an old phone or old hardware for years on end is that, eventually, it’s gonna get phased out. And when it happens, everything will slowly start breaking. If you have an Android 8.0 device, you’ll have to move to a newer phone if you use Android Auto on your car.
With the release of Android Auto version 15.5, now available to beta testers, devices must be running Android 9 Pie or a more recent version to install and receive future updates. Keep in mind that this move was first announced by the company over a year ago, so you actually got warned about this a pretty long time ago. . Previously, in 2022, Google had increased the minimum requirement to Android 8.0 Oreo. While the jump to Android 9 was planned, its implementation was delayed, allowing users on Android 8.x to continue receiving updates for many months. It looks like you won’t be able to update it from today, though.
The writing was on the wall, and frankly, a lot of apps have dropped Android 8.0 support already, so I’m surprised Google has kept it alive for this much. It’s not like this was a hugely popular platform that was worth it to keep alive, either. According to Google’s own Android distribution data from April 2025, devices still running Android 8.0 accounted for just 1% of all active devices, with Android 8.1 running on an additional 3%. That’s a whopping 4% of the billions of Android phones around the world. If you’ve bought a phone over the past six years, it already runs Android 9 or higher. And if your phone only has Android 8.0, it’s probably a really old device from 2016-2017—maybe even older if it got a healthy amount of updates over its lifetime. It has also probably been years since the last security update, so it’s a disaster in the making.
If you’re enrolled in the Android Auto beta program will see the “Android 9 and up” requirement on the Google Play Store page. This type of change, while annoying for the end user that uses this operating system on a daily basis, is a standard and necessary part of the software development lifecycle. By phasing out support for aging operating systems, developers can utilize newer, more powerful APIs available in modern Android versions. Backwards support is kept around so it works on as many phones as possible, but some older operating systems need to be eventually dropped.
If you use Android Auto with your Android 8.0 phone, you can review your options—see if your phone has an available update to Android 9 or a higher version, or buy a new phone.
Source: 9to5Google
