WhatsApp is constantly upgrading its cross-platform instant messaging app to enhance users' experience. As the app improves with new and advanced features, the operating system on which the app runs needs to be capable of handling such upgrades.
When the mobile OS doesn't support the app's ever-improving features, WhatsApp decides to let the OS go. The world's largest instant messaging app with over a billion users has already ended support for Android versions older than 2.3.3, Windows Phone 7 and iOS 6 and iPhone 3GS. It's time to let go off some more.
According to WhatsApp's FAQs page, support for Nokia S40, Nokia Symbian S60, BlackBerry OS and most importantly BlackBerry 10 will be ended on June 30, 2017. With this, BlackBerry phones will no longer get WhatsApp support.
"These platforms don't offer the kind of capabilities we need to expand our app's features in the future. If you use one of these affected mobile devices, we recommend upgrading to a newer OS version, or to a newer Android running OS 2.3.3+, iPhone running iOS 7+, or Windows Phone 8+ so that you can continue using WhatsApp," the Facebook-owned company noted.
If you are willing to transfer these chats from the outdated devices, there's no option to do so. But chats can be preserved by sending the chat history to an email from the app settings. If you include media, there's a limit of up to 10,000 messages, but without it, you can send 40,000 messages to the email.
After upgrading the mobile OS or the device itself, users can download WhatsApp and verify with the phone number to continue using it. The app works only with one number at a time, but apps like Parallel Space have made it possible to duplicate WhatsApp to run two accounts on a single device.
Several new WhatsApp features are reportedly under testing. The app is likely to get an option to recall a sent message, photo or a video. But several new features have also been added recently. WhatsApp for iPhones got photo tile display, colour filters and more, while Android version was recently updated to include chat pinning.
