Require permission only for older android versions: maxSdkVersion does not work?

Question

I want to some permissions only for older devices for compatibility. So I did some research and found this here:

android:maxSdkVersion

Answer 1

On my HTC with Android 5.0.2 external storaged failed when having the permissions and restrictions: android.permission.WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE and maxSdkVersion = 18. So I needed to change maxSdkVersion to 22.