Whatsapp Support Ends For Old Smartphones

February 3, 2020 Off By Rowena Cletus

It’s true, Whatsapp is ending support for some smartphones. But before you breakout into a full blown anxiety attack, let us explain. According to a blog post by the widely used messaging service, Whatsapp will no longer be functional on older smartphones.

The affected devices are Android an iPhones running on older versions of their respective operating systems. After February 1st, said devices won’t be able to create new accounts or use existing ones.

Here’s why you shouldn’t be concerned. This will only affect smartphones that are running on ancient software. Those of us on the following operating systems or newer, are safe:

Android running OS 4.0.3+
iPhone running iOS 9+
Select phones running KaiOS 2.5.1+, including JioPhone and JioPhone 2

If you’re an Android user, its highly unlikely that you would be running on Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich). The OS is considered archaic by today’s standards, and lacks many newer and useful features introduced in later versions of Android.

If you own an iPhone 4S or newer, there’s no cause for concern either. If you update your device regularly, then your phone should be running iOS 9.0 or newer. Head on over to your phone Settings to find out what version of Android or iOS that you are currently using.

And if you happen to be one of the unfortunate few who are still using outdated software, an upgrade is in order. Please bare in mind that Whatsapp doesn’t support transfer of chat history between Android and iOS. However, you can export said chat history as an email attachment.

Check out the Whatsapp FAQ here for the full post. The company has stopped developing features for older versions of Android and iOS, and to mitigate reliability issues, will not allow older smartphones to upgrade to the new program.