WhatsApp Won't Work on These Phones by 1st February 2020: Here's Why

WhatsApp is one of the most popular social media apps on the globe, with millions of users sending billions of messages every minute. The app's popularity has continued to grow over the last five years, even though it has been banned in countries like Iran, Syria, Cuba, and China. This app has also become easily accessible from almost all devices, ranging low-price phones to tablets and desktops.

While the app continues to gain new users daily, WhatsApp regularly checks a list of old phones, which they discontinue their support. That means users can use these phones to have fun at casino lounge, but they can't use them to create a new account or verify their existing accounts. Recently, WhatsApp released a post on their FAQ page saying that they'll be doing that again with some phones by 2020.

According to WhatsApp's update, users whose phones operate on Android 2.3.7 or older won't be able to access the app by February 2020. Users with iPhones running on iOS 7 and older also won't be able to use the app on their phone. Nonetheless, the update won't be affecting you unless you have an old Android or iPhone lying around as your backup.

The updates seem to be WhatsApp's way of saying they won't support age-old devices forever. A tweet from WABetaInfo also suggests that WhatsApp will not continue supporting iOS 8 devices. However, the users of iOS 8 phones can still use the existing WhatsApp application on their device, but they can't verify their account when they reinstall it.

WhatsApp's latest update is also asking feature users to start using phones running on KaiOS 2.5.1+ like JioPhone 2 and JioPhone. These updates mainly result from the new features that WhatsApp has been adding recently. That's because some of these features require powerful mobile devices with newer operating systems and enough RAM.

According to WhatsApp, these old phones don't have enough power to support most of their new features, and hence it's necessary to end their support. As a result, WhatsApp is warning that some of their features might stop functioning in devices whose OS is no longer supported. That shows how important it is to update to a new OS if you're iOS 8 or Android 2.3.7 and older.

For those with older phones, WhatsApp is recommending Android devices running on OS 4.0.3+. The app creators also recommend iPhones running on iOS 9+ and select phones using KaiOS 2.5.1+.