Starting early next year, popular messaging app WhatsApp will stop working on millions of smartphones which are still active up to date
According to WhatsApp, IPhone running on IOS 8 and older which translates to a total of 1.4 million active devices by 2019; including IPhone 5, will not be able to use the platform starting 1st February 2020. Currently the devices cannot create a new account or verify an existing one. The same applies to Android phones running on Android 2.3.7 and older, which translates to a total of 7.5 million phones as of May 2019.
Whatsapp Windows Support
Unlike iPhone and Android users who can use the platform until February next year, Windows Phone users are not so lucky. WhatsApp also plans to end support for all Windows Phone devices on December 31 2019.
This coincides with Microsoft’s plans to also end support for the platform altogether. This means that any of you still using a Windows Phone device, it’s really time to upgrade to something else.
According to the Facebook-owned messaging platform, the reason they are killing support for these legacy operating systems is that the platforms do not offer support for the kind of features WhatsApp plans to implement.
“This was a tough decision for us to make, but the right one in order to give people better ways to keep in touch with friends, family, and loved ones using WhatsApp,” Read a message from the company