By Adedapo Adesanya
Users of older phone models will lose access to the popular mobile chat application, WhatsApp, from January 1, 2021. The app developers said these set of persons may be unable to use some features or not have access to the app itself.
People who will be impacted are the ones who don’t have iOS 9 or above on their iPhone or Android 4.0.3 or above on their Android device. People with iPhone 4 models won’t be able to update to more recent software.
The same will happen to people with Android devices such as the Motorola Droid Razr and the Samsung Galaxy S2 as they will not be able to use the app from next week.
Some WhatsApp users will be able to upgrade their software to higher than iOS 9 or Android 4.0.3 to make sure they’re not impacted. This can be done on an iPhone by going to Settings > General > Software update to see what software the phone is running.
For Android users, they can access this by going to Settings, and it’ll likely be under a section called About Phone.
This means that for users who have a higher version of the software than iOS 9 or Android 4.0.3, they won’t have any issues in the new year.
Some with much older devices won’t be able to upgrade their software at all. Users of affected phones can also back up their chats before January 1 if they want to retain them.
They can do so by going to “Chat backup” option under Chats section in Settings.
Aside from backing up their chats, users of old devices should also start looking for smartphones that are compatible with WhatsApp if they want to use the messaging app in the future.
According to a research firm, Statista, as of October 2020, WhatsApp has 2 billion active global users, with Facebook Messenger in second place with 1.3 billion active users and WeChat following in third with 1.2 billion. India is WhatsApp’s biggest market.
Business Post had reported that WhatsApp made some changes to the app through the year 2020 including WhatsApp Payment, Dark Mode, Disappearing Messages, WhatsApp Group Video And Voice Calls, and the Mute Forever options.
WhatsApp said that in March, when the Coronavirus pandemic really kicked in, users on average were spending over 15 billion minutes talking each day on WhatsApp calls, well above the pre-pandemic usage trends.
