If you had an old device like that, could you still surf the web half-ways safely with another browser on those platforms?
As far as I know, currently there is no supported browser.
No Chrome, No Firefox.
What a pain, browsers are supposed to be basic computer tools but they’re so bloated now that they can’t be maintained on older hardware. There was once a Wintel upgrade treadmill but now it’s a Webdroid treadmill or something like that. Amounts to the same.
While it’s obviously sad to see devices lose support, Android 5, 6, and 7 came out ±10 years ago. If you’ve been running those Android versions on a device as your primary driver for this long, you’ve already missed out on a decade’s worth of software and security updates.
At this point in time, assuming your battery hasn’t given out and still lasts >2 hours (trust me, I have an iPhone SE 2016 I’d love to use as an MP3 player, but I’d need to replace the battery first to get any meaningful usage out of it), if you still don’t want to/can’t upgrade your device to a new phone…
…It might be (long past) time to upgrade to a new OS such as LineageOS. Even if your device can’t reach the latest Android 15 or 16, newer “custom operating systems” can oftentimes be even better than the original. This is speaking from a Pixel 2 XL owner who recently upgraded it from the long-discontinued Android 11 to the newest Android 15, now getting significantly better battery life and performance on top of a beautiful near stock experience.
