First Step on Downgrading Android
Believe it or not the portion of active android operating system below API 24 which is android v6.x and v5.x still has market share about 4% in the world. Although it is a single digit percentage but if you convert it to number of users it is still a number that we need to consider when do our app development. If there are 20 million android devices in a country then it means 800,000 devices.
The nature of your business might have impact whether you need to include those senior versions into your market share or not. If your app is an essential business app then you would like to check your analytic and make sure your app works perfectly for them. We used to able to use emulator to test the previous versions of android. However, if you work with M1 the option of emulator with old image is not exist ( at least at the time I wrote this article ).
If you need to downgrade your phone especially Samsung for various reason. This is the first step that you need to do. Forget about download odin, download image of the android, etc. You might not be able to downgrade it in the first place.
First turn on your phone then go to settings > About phone > Software information. Focus your eyes on Baseband version
The number after U is the patch number of the operating system. You can only downgrade with the version that has patch number at least same with the one displayed on your phone. In my case, I can downgrade it easily because the patch number is 1. However, if your phone has patch number 8 then big possibility that you can no longer downgrade the phone.
If you need older version of android phone and the patch number is almost 9 then it is better for your do not waste time to try downgrade it. Get to the store or marketplace and grab another phone. It will be faster and safe a lot of your time. Thank you. God bless you all.
