Huge change coming to Play Store
Google’s mission to narrow the gap between Android and iPhone will intensify this year, at least as far as the security and privacy of its billions of users is concerned. But you might miss out. And worse, you might find that some of the most important apps you use every day stop working. As 2025 begins, you may need to buy a new phone to ensure you don’t get caught out within the next few weeks.
This mission is not new—but it has never been as critical as now. Coming not long after the overdue cull of lower quality, higher risk apps on Play Store, Google is also finally clamping down on sideloading. This remains a key difference between Android and iPhone, albeit Play Protect has already been extended to cover apps from any source. Samsung—Android’s leading OEM, has gone even further to eradicate sideloading, at least for its mainstream users.
But there are two critical updates that take your security even further, which is timely given the worsening threat landscape. The downside is that both mean you need a fairly new phone—and one decision confirmed by Google will actually stop apps working on your phone if you don’t. That Play Store change is already underway and will be fully deployed within weeks.
A many as 750 million Android phones still run obsolete versions of the OS—which means no security updates. But for the rest, the good news is that Android 15 should be available on devices as far back as Samsung’s S21s, Pixel 6s and other devices of a similar age. That will open up new security options, albeit key updates including live threat detection will be restricted to newer devices. This uses on-device AI to flag threats in real-time. It’s hard to overstate how important an update this is.
Even so, if you are running an older device, the bigger issue you’ll have is the one confirmed by Google just a few weeks ago. This is a critical change coming to Android as Google “actively combats bad actors who try to deceive users or spread malware, and giving you tools to combat abuse.”
For the first time, Google will encourage developers to restrict their apps depending on the age and update-status of the OS on your phone. “Apps that use Play Integrity features have seen 80% less unauthorized usage on average compared to other apps,” Google says, as it updates “the technology that powers the Play Integrity API on all devices running Android 13 and above to make it faster, more reliable, and more private for users… making greater use of, hardware-backed security signals… making it significantly harder and more costly for attackers to bypass.”
In short, this will give apps “with higher security needs, like banking and finance apps, governments, and enterprise apps, more ways to tailor their level of protection for sensitive features, like transferring money.” This means if you’re running Android 12 or older, you may find your apps stop working.
Taken together, all these updates should push all 750 million users running aged and even obsolete versions of Android to upgrade. A line has been drawn in the cyber sand as Android continues its game of iPhone catch-up. And it’s now getting more serious. We have just seen the same with Samsung’s One UI 7 beta, which is all about security and again raises the bar even higher for its own users.
My recommendation is to ensure you are running Android 13 at a minimum—more than 30% of Android users need to upgrade. And for those concerned about a mobile threat landscape now being fueled by new AI tricks, you should ensure you can move to Android 15 with its new level of defenses.
Google has told developers the Play Store change means their apps can respond differently “on devices running Android 12 and lower than to the enhanced definition on devices running Android 13 and higher.” Remember, it’s not just what’s on your phone that’s air risk—it’s everything and every person your phone connects to that might be the wrong side of the line now being drawn.
These updates have already started to rollout but will apply universally from May 2025.