Google Personal Safety app could stop working on older Android phones (Pixels excluded)

Google’s Personal Safety app has been around for a few years now, and it seems some of the older phones won’t support it anymore. The folks at Android Authority managed to dig into the code of the Personal Safety app and find that it now supports Android 12 or later devices.

Introduced initially as a Pixel-exclusive feature, Personal Safety moved on to other phones as well (certain releases are not available on older hardware though). It manages emergency contact info, prompts safety check-ins, and even automatically detects car crashes.

Right now, Google has three variants of the app: one for older Pixels, one for Pixel 4 and newer, and one for third-party OEMs. And now, all of a sudden the most recent builds for the latter two versions will start requiring Android 12 or later, instead of Android 10 or later.

This will probably not going to have a huge impact on the majority of Personal Safety users. Pixel users won’t see any changes, and only older third-party phones will reportedly stop supporting it. But of course, there will always be those who use the app on an older Android phone and they won’t be happy when they find out about this.

But the thing is, safety isn’t always about avoiding accidents, it’s also about preventing security breaches on your phone. That is related to your device running the most up-to-date software as well. So maybe for some people, it is time to get an upgrade.