Android Auto Now Requires Android 11, Dropping Android 9 and 10

A familiar pattern

The move follows a routine Google has used before. In July 2024 the company changed the minimum from Android 8.0 Oreo to Android 9 Pie, but the formal change did not cut off older devices at once. Enforcement came in October 2025, when Android Auto 15.5 began requiring Android 9, while version 15.4 still worked with Android 8. At that time the change touched a small slice of the market: Google's data from April 2025 put Android 8.0 at about 1% of active devices and Android 8.1 at about 3%. This time two Android generations fall away in one step.

Among the affected phones are the Samsung Galaxy S9, Galaxy Note 9 and Sony Xperia XZ2 Compact. A Galaxy S9, with a Snapdragon 845 or Exynos 9810 chip and 4 GB of RAM, is not necessarily too weak to show maps, play music and handle calls on a car screen. The cutoff is set by software and the end of official support, not by hardware.

Why it matters

Older phones are often given a second life as dedicated car devices, and Android Auto is an ideal use for them. Drivers now depend on how long Google chooses to keep its platform compatible with old Android versions. Supporting legacy systems has a cost, and Android 9 and 10 are roughly eight and seven years old.

But for a car, seven or eight years is not old age. A working screen, cable and phone can be rendered useless together by nothing more than a version number.

To check your version, open Settings, then the system update section, which on most phones sits near the bottom of the list. It shows the current Android version and any available update.