WhatsApp Update: List of Smartphones That Will Not Be Supported in 2017

WhatsApp is the most popular messaging service with almost a billion users worldwide. One of the remarkable features about WhatsApp is its support for a broad spectrum of devices, from android, iPhone, Blackberry, Windows Phone to Symbian. Earlier last month WhatsApp introduced video calling and GIF support, and additionally many of the beta versions of the new release points to video streaming features as well.

However, WhatsApp is now stopping support for many of the older devices. In February this year, WhatsApp announced it would end support for older smartphone operating systems by the end of the year which includes older versions of Android, iOS, Windows Phone, Blackberry, and Symbian.
The seven-year-old WhatsApp’s announcement reflects the drastic change happened in the smartphone market. Back in 2009 about 70 percent of smartphones sold at the time had operating systems offered by BlackBerry and Nokia, while Android and iOS phones, which account for 99.5 percent of sales today were less than 25 percent of mobile devices sold at the time. 

WhatsApp says they are stopping the support to bring more improvements and features to more devices that are currently in use. These are the phones that will be affected by this:

BlackBerry OS and BlackBerry 10 : WhatsApp will stop support for most of the Blackberry devices in use right now, that includes phones like Blackberry Z10, Blackberry Passport, and Blackberry Classic. The support for these phones will end by June 30, 2017.

Nokia S40 and Symbian S60 : This includes Nokia feature phones or older high-end phones like the 41 MP Nokia PureView 808.

Android 2.1 and Android 2.2 : These are the early version of Android which was named Froyo. Devices running this version are at least 5 years older or more that, there won't be many users as of now.

Windows Phone 7 : Windows Phone 7 was Microsoft's big attempt to revolutionize the smartphone market, which ended up in failure. However, there are still a small group of Windows Phone users using Lumia 510, 710 and 810 smartphones.

iPhone 3GS/iOS 6 : iOS 6 was released by Apple on 2012. With most of the phones in use right now are versions since iPhone 4s, there is nothing much for an iOS user to worry about.

As per the list, the Android smartphone users need not worry as the app will be supported by most of the Android devices.

iPhone users having phones running on iOS 6 or earlier versions will not be able to use the services of the app anymore.