Well, it’s bad news for the group of people using WhatsApp on old models of cellphones. Reportedly, the instant messaging app will stop working on thousands of hundreds of phones in the upcoming few months. The news arrives as WhatsApp has decided to take back its support from some bygone mobile platforms. WhatsApp, with more 68.1 million active users in the US, will soon close down for millions of outdated devices. The Facebook-owned company calls it a challenging decision. As per the company, the range of companies affected by the judgment includes previous models of Apple, Android, and Windows. WhatsApp’s decision will come in effect from 1st February 2020.
Apart from this, WhatsApp has published a post in the support section of their website. In the notice, it recommends using the new version of iOS available for smartphones. As per the blog post, on iOS 8, users will no longer be able to create a new WhatsApp account. Notably, the new app update will require iOS 9 as a minimal OS version. So, users of the iPhone 5 will soon have an upgrade or change their device to continue using WhatsApp. At the same time, users of other smartphones, including Samsung, Sony, Huawei, or Google, will also experience the throwback.
As all those phones function on Android OS, it is essential to have an OS version up to 4.0. It means Android phones having an OS version higher than 4.0 or Ice Cream Sandwich will continue to enjoy the service. But the case of users having Windows Phone is different. All Windows Phone operating system will stop supporting after 31st December 2019. Even more, users of all the operating systems mentioned above are unable to make a new account on WhatsApp. Those users cannot even re-verify their existing accounts. On one side, WhatsApp is withdrawing its support from older cellphone models. On the other hand, it is functioning to launch the long-awaited Dark Mode feature.
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