I think it depends how you go about allowing the customers whose devices youâre dropping support for to access their accounts, as not all of them would be willing or even able to upgrade their devices, and dropping support means that theyâre essentially locked out of their account - which is definitely a very bad thing.
However, I do agree that you canât support older versions forever - you need to be able to drop support in order to get access to the new features provided in newer versions, as well as newer hardware, and the case of security has already been made by someone.
I think dropping support when the creator (Google) drops support is a good idea (or maybe a year after they drop support). That, or dropping support for versions with less than a 2.5% of active Monzo users using it (as long as you tell them in advance and still provide an older version of the app that they can use).
Iâd say support for 4 years, which would mean dropping Lollipop in November.
Maybe in the last year, drop the app to security/critical updates or a lite version (multiple APKs).
Any modern features? Does it support offline mode (where it caches the last fetched data and displays that if it canât connect to the network)? Etc.
Of course itâs gonna have the basic banking stuff, send a payment based on a sort code/account number, etc - that stuff doesnât really require any business logic at all, just POST to an endpoint and parse the response. I was talking about more modern features that require the app to do more than just parsing some XML (in case of Barclays Iâm sure itâs gonna be XML ).
Many of the things in my list arenât really âbasic banking stuffâ, and some of it is stuff that has long been requested of Monzo but been postponed as too complicated/advanced/whatever.
As part of their security model they donât. You may disagree with the security model, but that has nothing to do with âmodernâ or not.
Anyway, I donât want to take this further off topic, so I will stop here. Just wanted to point out that some âlegacyâ banking apps are way ahead of monzo at the moment, in terms of functionality.
Thanks everyone for the feedback! Please keep the thoughts and feels coming Definitely agree a web app would help a lot here.
If/when we decide to support supporting Android 5, we will absolutely give a lot of notice. The consequence of stopping supporting it could be that someone couldnât use Monzo anymore, so is definitely not something we would rush into.
For those curious, in terms of numbers of customers currently active on Android (the 3.4% statistic in my first post), this is ~3,500 people.
Itâs not really an issue surely?.. you compile with the compatibility libraries and with very little work can support right back into prehistory (1.6).
I tend to limit to kitkat and above for practical reasons (things like native PDF support), have deployed things with arcore support that run fine so itâs not like you canât support new things with suitable checks in the code.
Obviously thereâs âsupportâ in actively support, and âallow to workâ and there may be good reasons for former but the latter Iâd be surprised about. What feature is prompting this?
I canât believe youâre even considering this. A bank is a necessity in the modern age and you have a responsibility to your customers.
You canât claim to be a customer focussed company but tell 3500 people to go elsewhere because you canât be bothered to support their fully working device or build a website.
By all means restrict new features to new hardware but dropping support altogether is ridiculous.
In my experience this figure tends to drop quite quickly. I would be incredibly surprised if there were still 1000 people using Android 5.x in 6 months from now. At some point it stops being viable to have to put engineering resources in to supporting old operating systems for a rapidly decreasing amount of people.
We had to do this already, when we stopped support for iOS 9. It simply was not viable to continue to support it whilst simultaneously ensuring a high level of UX across all later iOS versions and devices.
Itâs not that we âcanât be botheredâ - itâs that we have a limited amount of resources, and we also have to dedicate a large amount of resources to building new things - see the huge amount of threads here that say âWhy doesnât Monzo have X feature yet?â or even the huge amount of responses we get for improving features that already exist.
With regards to Android specifically, we are looking for more Android engineers so if anyone knows a great Android engineer looking for work then tell 'em to apply, and then we have more resources to work with
You mean a device full of vulnerabilities and malware that even the operating system developer no longer cares about?
Iâm sorry that you fell for the scam of carrier-branded Android phones that receive absolutely zero updates but it isnât really the fault of Monzo is it?
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Anarchist
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So roughly 102,000 active users on Android, and all the rest on iOS?
I received an e-mail from Monzo today polling my views on this (as an Android 5 user). Have to agree that without offering customers another way to access their account this would be terrible CS. Thereâs no way Monzo can be considered a serious contender to legacy banks if it essentially turfs customers out. Also worth highlighting that your Android 5 share is going to be way less than the general population. Globally itâs 25% - canât find UK figures but guess they would be somewhere in the middle.
Rock and a hard place, 5.x is no longer supported by Google, so could be a security concern. However it was only released 3.5 years ago, which doesnât exactly feel fair.
Customers arenât figures, theyâre people. Youâre not building any old app that will be uninstalled in 6 months time, youâre building a bank that people rely on every day.
Then donât give the same UX across all devices. A good website is accessible by default. No-one should expect the moon from a 5 year old device but they should expect to be able to use basic banking facilities.
Sure, itâll take resources but thatâs the price you pay for building a better more ethical bank.
Sorry, that was a bad choice of words. I know that Monzo staff work hard and sacrifices have to be made.
38% of android users are on 5.1 and below. Itâs not a few. Itâs over a third of your potential customer base. People who are quite happy with their phone and not really planning to buy a new one because a bank wants them to⊠theyâll simply use a different bank.
Again I donât see the technical reason for this. The android UI controls are all backward compatible⊠itâs one of the things they google has always done well. Unless youâre doing something really odd the extra âeffortâ is simply to squirt it to an old phone and check it runs prior to release (which, with minor snafus, pretty much always does).
And yes screen resolution on some of those those old phones can be a bit challenging, but thatâs not an OS version issue eitherâŠyou can get a version of android 6 for a Nexus S.
On the Google Play store, it is possible to keep 2 versions of the app under the same app listing. If / when Lollipop is dropped, canât you just keep them on the, then current version? They wouldnât get updates / new features but at least they could use the app. If their phone manufacturer upgraded their phone, (very unlikely given Lollipops age) they could upgrade to the latest version
Definitely agree a web app would help a lot here.