Some of the old smartphones will not have the world’s most popular messaging platform working for them after December 31. The Facebook-owned instant messaging company has announced that WhatsApp support would end for certain mobile operating system post-December 31. The company regularly announces the list of operating systems for which it will soon end its support.
Last year, WhatsApp support for Windows Phone 8.0, BlackBerry OS and BlackBerry 10 was ended on December 31, 2017, and now going forward the messaging platform will be withdrawing support for Nokia S40 series phones in 2019, and some older Android 2.3.7 Gingerbread smartphones and iPhones running iOS 7 in 2020.
“The decision was taken because we will no longer be actively developing for these platforms and some features might stop functioning at any time. When we look ahead to our next seven years, we are looking to focus our efforts on the mobile platforms that a vast majority of people use. These platforms/phones don’t offer the kind of capabilities WhatsApp needs to expand its features in the future,” said WhatsApp in a statement.
Starting with Nokia’s S40 series, WhatsApp will stop working on these old Nokia phones after December 31. However, the devices running Android 2.3.7 Gingerbread and older version will be ending WhatsApp support after February 1, 2020. It won’t impact many users as only 0.3 percent of the Android smartphones are running Android Gingerbread platform.
Similarly post-February 2020, some old iPhones running iOS 7 and older versions will not be able to run WhatsApp. Apple had provided update to most devices with iOS 7 to higher version, so in case you still want to use it, you will be required to update your phone in order to continue using WhatsApp. Additionally, you can opt for feature phones like JioPhone, JioPhone 2 and Nokia 8110 4G, as they provide support for WhatsApp on KaiOS.
