Why Android 8.1 and not 8.0?

[RaV Mahov]

Asking mostly out of curiosity, partially because I'm running on 8.0. I wonder what API features were unavailable at 8.0 that forced the developers to use at least 8.1. The version number seems minor, but it's not exactly uncommon for Android to have minor version changed with some really huge thing included (like 2.1 did not include multitouch, but 2.2 did).

[Biohazard]

We just got an 8.0 device for testing purposes today and its OpenGL driver is a disaster. That's not uncommon and we already had to make several tiny workarounds even for modern Snapdragon processors, but if math just goes so wrong then eventually we hit a roadblock.

We will get another device, a Galaxy S7 because that's what many 8.0 users seem to have, and perhaps it'll work better. So we won't be able to support 8.0 broadly, we'll have to test each device at this point since we can't expect anything to work.

Unfortunately we can only get the Exynos and just flat out can't even test the Snapdragon Galaxys, so that's another problem.

[RaV Mahov]

I'm running on Xperia XZ Premium, so I could theoretically be able to update to some other version, but I use it for testing my apps on older Android versions.
The fact that the Android updates mostly kept breaking the stuff for me in previous Xperias didn't help (even this one, it seemed to break the camera app functionality, making it from very good to annoying to use), so I've stopped updating at some point.
Some of the fun old apps break with the newer versions too, so that also can serve as a reason.
If you will get to have something testable on that Android version, I'm willing to help.
For now, the APK refuses to install at all, so maybe the minimum supported version (and related packaging type) prevents it to even load properly.

[Biohazard]

Thanks, it would definitely help to have it tested on different devices so we can manually whitelist them later then (if it works well enough).

The apk won't load because it requires 8.1 as a minimum SDK version, yes. We will have to make it 8.0 compatible and then find a few people to test it on different SoCs, then we can also release it officially and manually whitelist supported 8.0 devices (if it works well enough).

[RaV Mahov]

If it's a major issue, of course it might not be worth it to support the 8.0, and I'll deal with it (HexShaders are sufficient for me, and Wallpaper Engine on PC is great enough).
I was mostly curious what features 8.1 had that prevented 8.0 from running it, but got my answer :)
Keep up the great work!