WhatsApp to kill support for older smartphone models

The idiom “No pain, no gain” is going to be true for those people who wish to continue using the WhatsApp messaging service, but currently own an old phone handset.
Earlier this year, the ubiquitous messaging app announced via its blog, that it would be dropping support for a range of mobile operating systems by the end of 2016, before updating the page to say some will be supported until June 30, 2017.
The company claim that this move will make the messaging service more secure and keep up with constantly upgrading technology.

“Earlier this week WhatsApp turned seven years old. It has been an amazing journey and in the coming months we’re putting an even greater emphasis on security features and more ways to stay in touch with the people that you care about,” said the company in a blog post.
“When we started WhatsApp in 2009, people’s use of mobile devices looked very different from today. The Apple App Store was only a few months old. About 70 percent of smartphones sold at the time had operating systems offered by BlackBerry and Nokia. Mobile operating systems offered by Google, Apple and Microsoft – which account for 99.5 percent of sales today – were on less than 25 percent of mobile devices sold at the time,” they continue.

The app will no longer work on the iPhone 3GS and all iOS 6 or earlier, all BlackBerry operating systems and BlackBerry 10, the Nokia S40 and Symbian S60, Android 2.1 and 2.2, and the Windows Phone 7.
“While these mobile devices have been an important part of our story, they don’t offer the kind of capabilities we need to expand our app’s features in the future,” the company revealed in a blog post.
“As we look ahead to our next seven years, we want to focus our efforts on the mobile platforms the vast majority of people use,” they added.
However, a recent update on their website reads: “WhatsApp is extending support for BlackBerry OS, BlackBerry 10, Nokia S40 and Nokia Symbian S60 until June 30, 2017.” Therefore, if you have one of these devices or operating systems, you have additional six months to make an upgrade to continue using WhatsApp.