Question

Our last update for our application caused it to be filtered out for Android 1.5 and Android 1.6 devices. We did not change anything in our manifest (aside from the updated version code).

These similar questions did not help:
Android App no longer visible by Android 1.5 on devices
Android app not appearing in Market for 1.5&1.6 devices, Bluetooth is android:required="false"

We created a test app with a stripped down manifest and compiled it with the Android 1.5 SDK. Even this basic app is filtered out. We tried contacting Android Market support five days ago but Google makes it pretty clear they don’t want to provide support to developers and say that it’s unlikely we’ll get a reply.

Here is the full AndroidManifest.xml for the test app:

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<manifest xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
      package="com.highwaynorth.test"
      android:versionCode="6"
      android:versionName="6.0">

    <uses-sdk android:minSdkVersion="3" />

    <application android:icon="@drawable/icon" android:label="@string/app_name">
        <activity android:name=".MainActivity"
                  android:label="@string/app_name">
            <intent-filter>
                <action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN" />
                <category android:name="android.intent.category.LAUNCHER" />
            </intent-filter>
        </activity>

    </application>

</manifest> 

Why is this being filtered?

Answer 1

Our app came back this week after Google posted this announcement to the Market on October 25th:

25 October 2011 – Recently published apps not appearing in Android Market

We’re disappointed that our app was gone from the Market for 6 weeks and all we get at the end in the way of an explanation is basically to say “it’s fixed now”