F-Droid is a nice app store that provides free and lean software. The idea of using old phones with modern software from F-Droid is quite obvious. There are several problems with e.g. F-Droid and Android 4.x but there are also several hints in this forum. Please help to collect them. This is a wiki thread, that means, most users can edit this post.
Helpful android apps
Using the PC to get F-Droid apps
- with Izzy’s repo browser you can browse the archive repo and there you get a download link
- https://github.com/mvdan/fdroidcl (from Does Fdroid works on old devices, such as android 4.2? - #13 by petit.boeuf )
- https://gitea.com/fasheng/deplaydroid (from Does Fdroid works on old devices, such as android 4.2? - #13 by petit.boeuf )
About android, F-Droid and other versions
- Dropping support for Android 4.x
- https://gitlab.com/fdroid/wiki/-/wikis/Running-on-old-Androids
- Bumping the minimum supported Android version to 4.0 (aka Ice Cream Sandwich aka android-14)
- Why is the android requirement for some applications so high?
- Izzy’s repo browser shows the min Android version in the details
The certificates (and ssl versions) can be too old
- https://github.com/AntennaPod/AntennaPod/pull/4497
- No trusted server certificate error (Android 2.1)
- Gpg signature - No more SHA1 please!
Repositories
- The F-Droid archive repository is included, but not activated, in F-Droid and F-Droid classic. (it crashes my Galaxy J1, maybe because of low ram (512MB). If your phone has no problems, you may get the old apk versions which can be used by old Android versions)
- https://forum.f-droid.org/t/known-repositories/721