Whether we like it or not, the sands of time keep falling no matter what. Just like its users, devices tend to age and we all know how technology advances: what is brand new today will be outdated tomorrow. Despite the affection we have developed towards our old smartphone, computer or tablet, sooner or later we have no choice but to renew it. The sad thing is, WhatsApp, the world’s largest messaging app, shares the same belief. But don’t worry, this time we don’t have any alarming news… well sort of. Jokes aside, the company just announced their service will abandon older smartphone versions. If you own one of the latest smartphones you should be good, otherwise make sure to stay around to find out whether you’ll be affected.
According to WhatsApp’s blog, “as we look ahead to our next seven years, we want to focus our efforts on the mobile platforms the vast majority of people use”. Considering their statement, the company has a perfectly valid reason for such measure, especially if we look at how much things changed since seven years ago. “[…] in 2009 [when WhatsApp launched] […] the Apple App Store was only a few months old. About 70% of smartphones sold at the time had operating systems offered by BlackBerry and Nokia.” The company goes further, explaining that “mobile operating systems […] which account for 99.5% of sales today were on less than 25% of mobile devices sold at the time.”
With this being said, users who are currently running WhatsApp on Android 2.1 and 2.2, Windows Phone 7, iPhone 3GS or iOS 6 will no longer be able to use the service following this year, as support for such mobile operating systems will be discontinued after the end of 2016.
But that’s not all, as BlackBerry OS and BlackBerry 10, Nokia S40 and Nokia Symbian S60 users will also see the support for these devices being thrown out of the window, although only after June 30th, 2017. This means that if you’re one of the affected users running these mobile OS’ you’ll have 6 extra months to say good bye to WhatsApp.
There is no further recommendation from the company other than actually having to get a newer device with a compatible version to run WhatsApp.
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