WhatsApp will no longer work on devices that happen to run the old version of Android – as old as Android 2.3.7 Gingerbread. The latest news coming about won’t just affect Android, as iPhones running iOS 8 or older too won’t be able to run WhatsApp anymore.
This decision will go on to affect many, as the Facebook-owned WhatsApp messenger happens to be one of the – if not the most popular messaging app used across the globe – proven by the fact that it has more than a billion downloads with respect to the Playstore – with the numbers no less impressive when Apple’s App Store is taken into consideration. Unfortunately enough for all those who have made the habit of using the app for their day to day messaging routines, WhatsApp is dropping support of many of the Android devices.
And so starting the first of February, not only will WhatsApp stop supporting devices running Android 2.3.7 Gingerbread and older, but users will also no longer be able to create new devices or indeed reverify existing accounts on such older devices.
The only good news coming out if this though is the fact that this won’t affect as many devices and people as one would have imagined. In accordance with what the Android distribution dashboard has had to say, only 0.3 percent of all Android users (as of May 2019) happen to be running Gingerbread or older – and so the odds are, the latest decision by WhatsApp is unlikely to affect your device.Windows phones too will get the axe – but that happened at a much earlier date : on the 31st of December. In fact, it has been reported that many Windows Phone users have not been able to download WhatsApp from Microsoft Store since July of last year. This points out to the indication that WhatsApp may have been preparing for such a move for quite some time.
