For users of very old Apple iPhones and various Samsung Android smartphones, WhatsApp will end it's upport as of today, December 31, 2022. That means, that it's no longer possible, to install the WhatsApp app on such a device. That's because Meta, the operator of the WhatsApp service, has announced the end of support for older OS versions, which affects 49 older smartphone models.
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I came across this information via the following tweet, which Cybernews has published in this article. According to this WhatsApp FAQ, the service will then support devices with the following OS versions:
- Android running OS 4.1 and newer
- iPhone running iOS 12 and newer
- KaiOS 2.5.0 and newer, including JioPhone and JioPhone 2
Thus, those who own devices with older operating systems will no longer be able to install a WhatsApp app. But old devices already having installed a WhatsApp app are still working beyond Dec. 31, 2022.
Frankly spoken, this should affect only a few users, and they should have received a corresponding notification from WhatsApp in the respective app by now.
Probably affected from the inability to freshly install WhatsApp are, for example, iPhone 5 and iPhone 5c, various Samsung Galaxy models that were launched until 2013, as well as various older models from Huawei, LG and Sony Xperia. All of these devices do not receive operating system updates and are dropped from WhatsApp support. So an installed WhatsApp app doesn't receive further updates. Owners of iPhones with iOS 10 and 11 should even no longer be able to receive WhatsApp updates since October 24, 2022, according to this article.
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