Google Play Store Release Issue

If your Old APK version is a higher number than your New APK version then you get this error.

It is not the version name that matters, that can actually be any string, it is only the version code which must always be higher than a previous version.

https://developer.android.com/studio/publish/versioning

To fix for Flutter

In pubspec.yaml it is the version line, and the number after the + sign is the one that must be higher than the Old Version Code shown in the Google Play Console screen as the "1 app bundle deactivated".
That would be 50 if this was your version line :

version: 1.0.0+50

I contacted the Google support and they replied within 24 hours.

The issue is the android:versionCode in the AndroidManifest.xml is lower than my previous release. After I fixed the issue I was able to release my app without any issue.

How I fixed the issue

I changed the android-versionCode to a higher value in <manifest tag in the config.xml file so AndroidManifest.xml has the higher value.

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Full reply from Google

Hi,

Thanks for contacting Google Play Developer Support.

You're seeing that error message because your new APK has a lower version code than the previous APK. Newer APKs must always have a higher version code than the previous version, or the Play Store won't know that the new APK is an update. Please change your new APK's version code to be at least 206020.

Regards,

Google Play Developer Support

Update both versionCode and versionName. 

minSdkVesion 16 
targetSdkVesion 26
versionCode 2
versionName 1.1

I faced same issue, interestingly the versioncode(120001) of new release (12.0.0) was less than the versioncode(1104058) previous release (11.4.5)

I resolved this issue following this link Setting Android version code in Ionic 2