Google Personal Safety tweak reminds us non-Pixel support even exists (APK teardown)

It’s a big, scary world out there, but who better to have your back than your trusty smartphone? Android users have been able to relax a little under the watchful eye of Google’s Personal Safety app for a few years now, managing emergency contact info, prompting safety check-ins, and even automatically detecting car crashes. Initially a Pixel-exclusive feature, we eventually saw Personal Safety come to other companies’ phones, as well. But now Google’s narrowing availability just a bit, as it stops preparing certain Personal Safety releases for older hardware.

If you still think of Personal Safety as exclusively for Pixel phones, we would not blame you. We first learned of work towards possibly expanding it to third-party phones about two years ago, but by the time that actually happened, it didn’t attract much attention. These days, Google maintains three variants of its Personal Safety app: one for older Pixels, one for the Pixel 4 and newer, and one for third-party OEMs. But now, all of a sudden, the most recent builds for those latter two variants have graduated from support for Android 10+ to Android 12+.

Honestly, this is probably going to have no impact on the vast majority of Personal Safety users. Pixel users will not see any of its effects, and third-party phones already enjoying Personal Safety access should also be running Android versions modern enough for this change not to matter. That said, in a relatively open ecosystem like Android offers, there are always going to be edge cases, and we can absolutely imagine someone out there who has shoehorned Personal Safety onto their Android 9 custom ROM phone, and are about to have a slightly annoying day.

Safety’s not just about avoiding accidents, but also keeping your digital life secure by making sure your devices are running the most robust, up-to-date software available. Maybe take Google’s lead on this one and upgrade to a phone from this decade?