Whatsapp Will Stop Working on Older Phones Soon

If you are one of the few users who are stuck on one of the older smartphones (or a “dumb” phone), there is one more reason for you to finally switch to a more modern phone.

WhatsApp, the world’s second largest social networking app and one probably all your friends already use, will stop working on a bunch of old phones from 2018.

The list of OS’s that will be deemed useless includes Windows Phone 8.0, Symbian S40, BlackBerry OS and BlackBerry 10. These operating systems follow the Nokia Symbian S60, which was discontinued at the end of June 2017.

Less Than 1% of Users

The news wasn’t unexpected, since with time the number of users on these platforms have dwindled to less than 1 percent of the market. Also, with a clear lack of support, several of them are becoming increasingly vulnerable to new and intricate hacking methods.

More-importantly, the platforms aren’t advanced enough to support some of WhatsApp’s more recent developments and features such as the ability to delete messages. As the social network tries to outpace others with developments, it is becoming increasingly difficult to carry the added baggage of these aging platforms any further.

Will Get Security Updates for A Year

With the support for these platforms effectively ending, users can expect to receive no updates in the future. The security-related updates are expected to continue for one more year, though.

Meanwhile, users of older Android versions should ideally start preparing themselves too; Android versions 2.3.7 Gingerbread and older will stop getting support after January 2020, though, at least for now they are still supported, likely due to the millions of people who still use the phones.