WhatsApp to stop working on Windows and old Android devices

There have been no new Windows Phone since 2015, and iOS 7 and Android 2.3.7 are from 2013 and 2010 respectively

By December 2019, users of smartphones running on Windows operating system, iOS 7 or older and Android 2.3.7 and older will have to upgrade to a new device or lose out on using WhatsApp.

This is after WhatsApp announced that it would withdraw support for smartphones running on these systems on December 31, 2019.

“You’ll no longer be able to use WhatsApp on all Windows Phone operating systems after December 31, 2019 and all phones on iOS 7 or older, and Android 2.3.7 and older, as of February 1 2020. Because we no longer actively develop for these operating systems, some features might stop functioning at any time,” Whatsapp explained through its mobile device support blog.

There have been no new Windows Phone since 2015, and iOS 7 and Android 2.3.7 are from 2013 and 2010 respectively

In 2016, WhatsApp stopped working for Windows Phone 7 and in 2017, WhatsApp ended support for the app Nokia Symbian S60 and the BlackBerry OS and BlackBerry 10 stopped running the app after December 31, 2017.

According to the recent Android distribution numbers, there are still 0.3% of Android Gingerbread smartphone users, which accounts for close to 3.9 million users.

Android is now found on more than 1.3 billion smartphones right now and a 0.3% users seem to be a very small number. So there’s still 19 months of time left for the Android Gingerbread smartphone users to upgrade to a new smartphone, or lose out the support for WhatsApp. The same applies to Apple iOS 7 users as they also have the same 19 months of time to get a new smartphone running the latest software.