Did you ever wonder how can you as an individual help build a sustainable world? With my fiancée, we’re constantly improving our way of life to produce less waste, and reduce our footprint on Earth.

The main focus of ours is the decrease in consumption. For example, I’m using a OnePlus 3T for 3,5 years, and my girlfriend has an iPhone 5S…

Thinking about old phones it came to my mind, that finally, I found a field in my professional life I definitely can contribute to the waste-reducing goal: I have to create apps that are running on old devices too.

With this solution, the users don’t have to buy a brand-new phone just because their beloved app does not support his/her device anymore.

I was wondering what is the perfect indicator in apps for that, and I found one: minSdkVersion. Keeping minSdkVersion as low as possible is one way to guarantee that the app will run on old phones too. Additionally, it helps to create SMART goals for myself, as the M in SMART stands for measurable, and what can be measured easier than a number from 1-29?

I think if next time we’ll discuss increasing the minSdkVersion on projects I’m participating I’ll be a bit more against it.

I’m not saying that everyone should target phones from the Middle Ages, but I feel even such small effort (or not too small, it’s up to you) counts.

Máté