With iOS 7 bound for iPhones, iPads and iPods today, it would be easy to forget that there are users out there that are still on iOS 4 or iOS 5. Apple has recognised this and has now added the ability to download the last compatible versions of apps, if the latest version is not compatible with your iOS device. What this means is that if you chose to stick with iOS 5 for your iPhone 3GS, you will now get access to older, compatible versions of certain apps whereas before this, only the latest versions were available on the Apple App Store.
This new feature was spotted by Reddit user ‘AutumnStrings’ (go, give him/her an upvote) who also posted a screenshot of the Twitter app being downloaded to an Apple device running on a version older than iOS 5. Currently, it’s not clear which apps allow this feature and it seems likely that the decision to allow downloads of older versions rests with the app developers. With this new feature going live, a new Wikia page has been created online listing out the apps that have been verified to allow downloads of older versions. Currently this list only has seven apps but includes hugely popular ones like Twitter, Fruit Ninja, Google Earth and Jetpack Joyride. Hopefully, we’ll see this list increase as the gap between iOS 7 and iOS 5 widens.
Android currently does not have a similar feature and users can only download the latest version of apps and in the case of incompatibility, users will not see the app in the Play Store on their device. However, it’s worth pointing out here that a vast majority of Android apps are still compatible with Android 2.2 (Froyo), released more than three years ago, so incompatibility may not be that much of an issue.
Source: Reddit via The Next Web