Should an iOS app ad show the minimum iOS version and/or the minimum device required?

Question

I was asked what the minimum requirements of the app are from our marketing team. What do they need from an user experience perspective:

• The minimum iOS version required (iOS 6.1)
• The minimum device required (iPhone 3GS)
• None of them
• Both of them

I would personally prefer using the minimum iOS version required as it is more accurate, but our marketing lead wants to include the minimum device required. The problem IMHO is that iOS 6.1 is the last minor update the iPhone 3GS received, so there might be some iPhone 3GS Users out there using even older versions.

What do UX experts think about that?

Answer 1

I would say iOS version is what really matters to user.

See this statement from iTunes U FAQs pages:

You can use the iTunes U app on iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch with iOS 5 and iTunes 10.5.2 or later. (link)

Though, your app might have hardware requirements e.g. Bluetooth LE. In that case you could specify "Bluetooth LE, as available in iPhone 4s, 5, 5s, 5c, etc".

Answer 2

Minimum iOS version only.

The minimum iOS version defines which hardware it can be run on. For example, if you say your app has a minimum version of iOS 6.0, then it will not support the iPad 1st generation, which does not go above iOS 5.1. You may have a user with an iPhone 3GS, which currently runs iOS 5, but that user is able to update to iOS 6 to run your app. Stating the minimum hardware does not really make sense.

In general, iOS does not suffer from fragmentation issues, and most users will upgrade to newer OS versions, so you don't have to worry as much with support older versions.

http://www.14oranges.com/2013/10/ios-version-statistics-15th-october-2013/