After a few big and important upgrades, I basically put together an almost entirely new app. Contents, images, functions are retained and have been expanded. But I removed many many unnecessary blocks and compressed others, the structure is essentially a new one.
In the previous app, I also built an update system using a TinyWebDB so that people could theoretically be forced to update the app or even make the app unusable (emergency shutdown).
My question is: Can I upload the new version with the corresponding next higher version code as an update to Google Play and save people from uninstalling and reinstalling? I would use the same package name of course and the same app name.
I needed to rise the min SDK to Android 5.0. Is there anyone else’s experience that they can share with me?
without knowing the details of your internal changes noone can know it…
but you can test it yourself… have your old version installed on the device and install the new version to find out, if it is working fine or you need some extra logic
The changes are serious. Virtual screens, simplified logic, new variables, new tags in TinyDB and so on.
I installed the old app via Google Play Store, but of course not the new one yet, the message then reads “App was not installed” without any further explanation.
But after I uninstalled the app and installed it manually as an .apk file, it worked without any problems. I hope the same goes after I’ve uploaded the update to Google Play. This is the last thing I DO NOT know before it is released. And this is where the experiences of others come into play …
well, if you were not able to upgrade the old version it looks like your users should uninstall the old version efore installing the new one…
it might be easier to use a new package name for the new version then…
and aditionally you could release a new version of the old package name, which just displays a message for the user to install the new app including a link to the new app in Google Play