I'm not clear on what my Gear VR users should expect if I change my existing app to support only Go moving forward. We would do this because of upgrading the SDK suite / integration from version 1.41 or lower to 1.42 or higher within the Unity project. As Oculus no longer officially supports the platform, we need to follow suit at some point or be stuck with an old SDK for too long. This is okay, given our small population of Gear users. However, we'd like to let them know in advance what will happen, and I really don't know for certain from the information seen thus far. The official announcement only clarified perhaps the most obvious points (I can't post links yet, but it was November 7, 2019 "Gear VR App Development no Longer Supported From Oculus SDK Suite 1.42 and Future Versions").
The current build on our STORE channel is Gear compatible. At some point we would update with one produced with a newer SDK, which will not be Gear compatible (Go only). Has anyone else done this already? If so, what did your Gear users experience? If their last compatible build remained installed, could it still be restored if it got uninstalled at some point later? We are aware that a newer incompatible build is not supposed to appear in the Gear store. If another build channel were created to have all the Gear users as members, would it change the situation at all? Anything else noteworthy? We are looking for an official response as well, but it's good to have the answer clarified among the community.
FYI we got some answers from a support ticket, so I will share. We've been told that once we drop Gear support in our STORE build, existing Gear users will keep their last supported build, and if uninstalled they can still reinstall that build (should still be visible in Gear store). Extra build channels shouldn't be necessary.
Once we move forward with the change, I will try to remember to update this, in case anything else is worth noting. Our app is distributed with keys by the way.
