WhatsApp to end support for Windows Phone 7.1 by the end of the year

Michael Cottuli

Popular messaging app WhatsApp has been around for a long, long time. To be exact, WhatsApp has been around for seven years. The app recently celebrated its seventh anniversary, and with that benchmark, the company behind it decided to put out an announcement that was sure to make a few waves among its users. WhatsApp’s announcement boils down to this: They won’t be developing for older mobile operating systems anymore. By the end of 2016, the following operating systems will no longer be compatible with WhatsApp:

  • BlackBerry, including BlackBerry 10
  • Nokia S40
  • Nokia Symbian S60
  • Android 2.1 and Android 2.2
  • Windows Phone 7.1

The news may be a bit upsetting to some people, but nobody can really blame WhatsApp for discontinuing service for these operating systems. It takes valuable time and resources to commit to supporting an operating system, and the fact is that not many people are using these anymore – most have upgraded to a more recent Android OS or Windows 10 Mobile.

The post concluded by asking those with the affected operating systems to go about upgrading before the end of 2016 so that they can continue using WhatsApp without interruption.