Showing Revision 11 created 05/25/2016 by Udacity Robot.

1. Title:
   Select a Minimum and Target SDK - Developing Android Apps
2. Description:

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   Android 1.0 launched in 2008. And in just the six year since then,
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   there has been 11 new major platform releases. On the Android developer side,
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   we show the relative number of active Android devices running a given platform
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   version in this pie chart, because pie charts are awesome. For our purposes
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   though, you're really better off looking at this as a histogram. If you squint,
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   you can almost see a vaguely bell-shaped curve, with the oldest releases here at
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   the left, their popularity dropping off as devices are upgraded or
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    replaced. The largest proportion of devices are here in the middle,
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    representing devices about two years old. And the newest platforms,
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    gaining popularity as new phones are released or upgrades go out,
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    are here on the right. So with that in mind, the Min SDK acts as your low-pass
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    filter. Google Play won't show your app on devices running a platform version
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    lower than its minimum SDK version. So why not just set the Min SDK to one and
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    support everyone? Generally, you'll want to target as many users as you can, but
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    there's a cost associated with supporting some of these older versions.
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    Things like creating different execution paths around deprecated or
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    update APIs or presenting a different UX to devices with different features. So
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    you need to balance the opportunity of expanding your audience with the cost of
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    supporting those new users. Also, remember that each release introduced with it
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    new APIs and hardware support. So it may not make sense to
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    make your app available to devices that don't support your minimum feature set.
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    By comparison, the Target SDK is not a high-pass filter.
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    It's used only to declare which platform version you've tested on.
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    An app targeted to a certain API will continue to be forward compatible on
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    future releases. The platform uses the Target SDK values in case a future
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    platform makes a significant change to expected behavior. This ensures your app
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    doesn't break when a user's phone gets upgraded. If you're developing a new app,
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    there's really no reason to target anything but the latest Android version. And
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    once your app has been released, make it a point to update your Target SDK and
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    test as soon as possible when new platform releases roll out so you can take
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    advantage of every new platform optimization and improvement it has to offer.