Important message for people using device operating systems (OS) lower than Android 7.0 and iOS 12.0:

Thanks for that.

Can you tell me my iPad will remain functional after the 2.22 version I will not be able to install?

every time a developer for proprietary hardware ( from wyze or elsewhere) makes a decision not to support legacy APIs ( e.g android 6/ ios 11 )
he/she is condemning thousands of smart phones/ ipads which were perfectly useable to the scrap heap.

not very environmentally friendly, and involves an upkeep expense which is not in line with owning a $20 budget camera

wyze should offer on its own website an archive of .apk for past versions .

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I blame the greed of the Phone manufacturers refusing to continue to support the newer OS’s to try to force people to buy new phones from them.

Developers can’t be expected to continue supporting out of date OS’s forever. Nobody supports Symbian OS or Palm OS anymore, among countless others. In a way older Android and iOS versions are fairly similar situations, they just can’t handle the things that are in demand anymore. Manufacturers purposely won’t allow upgrades to the old phone models because then they’d lose money. It’s kind of their way of a long term subscription model…force everyone to buy a new phone once in a while so their cashflow continues. They COULD allow it, but they don’t have any monetary incentive to do so. Apple supports the longest because they do get money for continued support in a way with all the other services and eco system requirements that get you locked in. App Developers have to draw a line somewhere and when demanded features aren’t available on deprecated OS’s, they kind of have to move on. I’d say 5-7 years back in phone models is a fair line to draw though.

Though I do agree with the point about making older APK’s available on the website. I’m totally onboard with that.

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I could be wrong as I dont use Apple but I don’t think you can load old apps on Apple products

All well and good, but my question still hasn’t been answered.

I’ve run into the same problem with Sonos. I cannot upgrade my iPad to the latest Sonos app because the iOS on the pad is so old. However, I still can operate my Sonos but without full capability. I want to know if I’ll be able to do that with my current, out of date iPad and Wyze 2.22.

usually its just down to a developer (who is not aware of the issues raised on these forums) and arbitrarily choosing a minimum sdk

if you spend 5 minutes searching through the forums you can see plenty of interest of combining these $20 phones with older tablets/smartphones.

To decide where the line should be cut, Wyze should hold a poll .

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To carverofchoice,
Could you please direct me to “there are always specials and options to get brand new phone at $0 down and $0 monthly cost with a 2 year contract for phones that support the latest OS,”
Why would you need a 2yr contract to pay$0.
Would love to see that.

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Ya thanks. I do have tiny cam ( paid )on my fire TV/tablets and even phone as not 100% of my cams are just Wyze, although they have issues of their own where I could never get them to record to SD card for playback and wasn’t going to pay for cloud. I run 3 cam plus memberships currently.

Sadly Tiny cam for me lately has been horrible. Often the cams go offline or the app closes a dozen times before it is stable. This has also been happening in the wyze app.

I just wish I knew about this OS change a few months ago when I went from 3 wyze devices to 13, as I control outside plugs and bulbs through it as well on the tablets. The wyze outdoor plug hooked to a fan on low in the “cat” house on hot days/nights cools off my scared furry friends on one outlet and when I see the raccoon trying to sneak a meal, the other plug is attached to a handheld vac that scares the living hell out of it. My nightly entertainment. I have my cams set to turn on the bedroom lights on person detection so if I am in bed at midnight and someone is walking around my doors it turns on the lights. While I can set many of these up on the phone which is I think android 11, just worried about tablet functions. I guess we shall see!

PS let us set colors under rules for the color bulbs and not just shades of white please Wyze

currently in beta with the new rules engine.

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We are just fellow users. Only Wyze could say with any certainty what if any features will break on older app versions. Eventually I would expect all of them will.

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Or, at least, the ability to keep the older version of the app and not be required to update. And yes, an archive of all older, down rev apps for various reasons.

My iPad is forever locked at OS 1.3.4 and that’s not good enough to run Sonos on

What’s going to happen to all the people with a version of Android that’s too old. Are you planning to offer refunds for the equipment they have purchased that will no longer be useful without an app?

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Welcome @gary.heard!

This does not mean the app will stop working, some features might not be available though.

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Well, one of the main changes is that the Wyze Video Doorbell is moving to a more stable call/streaming method. The older OS versions cannot support it so that entire highly requested product wouldn’t work anymore. We don’t make this decision lightly and understand that it impacts folks and we apologize for that.

I’ll bring up the APK idea but I can’t promise we’ll do that. I forget all of the discussion, but we’ve had it before and there were strong reasons to not make those publicly available. I’ll see if I can at least get one of the most recent version before the OS compatibility is changed.

We aren’t trying to trap people into purchasing new phones, we promise. There’s a reason that we held onto this compatibility though it did cause some complications on our end to do it for a long time. But when we finally had to admit that we couldn’t get the doorbell change to work on those older OS, we had to move forward with this.

The current app will continue to work but you won’t be able to update it to the newer versions if you have an OS below the cutoff. So the basic camera streaming is good to go. :slight_smile:

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Thanks for the clarifications Gwendolyn.

If people with older phones want to keep using their Doorbell, does that mean they also need to refuse to update the firmware for that device too? Or will the new firmware allow the doorbell to continue to work with both the old app and old streaming protocol as well as the new app and new streaming protocol? Or will these people have to make sure to keep older doorbell firmware on there to ensure it will continue to stream to the old app?

That won’t affect me (I always update to the newest betas of everything), but I thought it would be good clarification to make for those people who are concerned about the issue, and who may need to know if they should keep the older firmware for their doorbell too.

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I know we’re still aiming for the best experience we can make but it’s looking like we cannot fit both methods on the doorbell. So hopefully that would be something we could do but I would currently expect the newer doorbell firmware to make things weird on older apps.

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As an early adopter to Wyze, I started buying Wyze products in November 2017, roughly about a month or so after the company started shipping products. And some of those legacy products are still in active use with me. From that early time to the present I have used a de-commissioned Android phone to access the Wyze App rather than my primary phone. It is somewhat frustrating to hear that the newer versions of the App will no longer support Android OS older than 7.0, but – since November 2017, Wyze released numerous products, all requiring specialization in feature and function. It was, and is, inevitable that all those features for all those different products would someday reach the point where only more updated Android OS versions could handle the demands. I am not happy with this, but I understand why it must happen. I would like to have had more advance notice to prepare, but will find a way to to adapt.

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Easy for Android users. Apple devices probably require some hacks/jailbreak.
Many sites, like this one, keep older APKs archived. You can also back up the APK yourself from your phone:

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FYI.

I’m down to one trusted repository (APKMirror) and they don’t carry everything. :frowning: