Comment by sltkr

While you are technically correct (the best kind of correct), official guidance is to use support libraries that are at least as new as the targetSdkLevel, so if you follow that recommendation you still have to update.

Also, I try to at least do the bare minimum level of testing the app still works after rebuilding by launching the app in the emulator once (I don't usually have a phone that runs the newest API level), which means downloading at least a new emulator image.

In practice it's just easier to update the entire platform.