Why WhatsApp may stop working on your phones next month
WhatsApp has said the messenger will stop working on millions of people’s phones from Saturday, February . WhatsApp has at least 1.5 billion users all over the world. The Facebook-owned app stopped supporting a number of devices on December 31. And on February 1, it will render lots more handsets out of date, Metro has […]
WhatsApp has said the messenger will stop working on millions of people’s phones from Saturday, February .
WhatsApp has at least 1.5 billion users all over the world.
The Facebook-owned app stopped supporting a number of devices on December 31. And on February 1, it will render lots more handsets out of date, Metro has said.
On December 31, 2019, WhatsApp said any phone running the Windows Mobile operating system will no longer be supported.
From this Saturday, any iPhone running software older than iOS 7 will no longer be supported and neither will any Android device with version 2.3.7 installed.
Affected phones
The last iPhones released running iOS 7 were the iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C back in 2013. It was superseded by iOS 8 in 2014. So, if you bought an iPhone (or iPad) after that date you’re going to be fine, according to the report.
Similarly, Android 2.3.7 was known as ‘Gingerbread’ and was launched way back in 2010.
By February of 2011, it had been supplanted by Android 3.0, also known as Honeycomb.
Chances are, unless you are still rocking a Google Nexus S or a Samsung Galaxy S, you will probably be fine.
Windows Mobile is even older – it was originally rolled out in 2003 and ran until 2010 on devices like the Motorola MPx200.
When it became clear that iOS and Android were more superior, Microsoft re-engineered its mobile operating system into the tile-based Windows Phone OS – which didn’t fare much better.
WhatsApp says that anyone using these older phones can no longer create new accounts or reverify existing accounts.
“Because we no longer actively develop for these operating systems, some features might stop functioning at any time,” the company said in a blog post announcing the cut-off dates.