Quickly Find Out Whether An Android App Is Compatible on Your Smartphone Or Tablet Device

When you install apps from the Android market or from a third party developer’s website, sometimes it may occur that the application might not be compatible with your Android device. If you are using a very old version of Android OS on a primitive smartphone, chances are that the latest apps available from the Android market won’t be supported in it.

The question is: how do you find out whether a free or paid Android app is compatible with your mobile device, tablet or smartphone? The previous logical way to determine the device compatibility of an Android app was to download the APK file, install it and then run the app to confirm whether the application is compatible with your device. If not, you can always uninstall the app and move on to the next similar item.

The good news however is that the Android team has pushed a slight update to the Android market, which now shows device compatibility for new applications as well as for future upgrades of installed apps on your smartphone. When you browse through apps in the Android market, you will see a green box on the left side, as shown below:

The Android market website will automatically recognize the mobile device or tablet you’re using and throw suggestions as on which device this particular app is compatible with. The message is shown at a prominent location so even your mom can easily figure out whether this particular app will actually work on her Android tablet.

The advantage here is that you won’t have to read those long user reviews and forum posts on the developers website just to find out whether this particular app has bugs or might frequently crashes on your Android phone.

Please note that you must be logged in to the Google account used on your phone, or else the compatibility meter box will never appear.

Also read: Use your Windows computer to install apps on your Android phone.