14 DAY TRIAL // WhatsApp is currently the world’s number one mobile messaging app, and obviously, the parent company needs to update its device requirements every once in a while in order to be able to offer new features to users worldwide.
And while this is good news for most of us, it’s also bad news for others, as it means WhatsApp sometimes drops support for some old phone models out there, both in the iOS and in the Android ecosystems.
This weekend, I’ve come across reports from several high-profile tabloids claiming that beginning with January 2021, WhatsApp would no longer work on the iPhone 4 and a series of devices running Android 4.0.3.
The alarming headlines made some users out there to look for alternatives, especially as we’re only a few days away from the moment this change is supposed to come into effect.
WhatsApp already unsupported on the iPhone 4
According to these reports, the affected devices are iPhones not running iOS 9 and Android devices powered by OS version 4.0.3.
And while at first glance this sounds like something really big, it’s actually a change that WhatsApp was announced one year ago and which came into effect shortly after that. In other words, iPhone 4 and any other iPhone not running iOS 9, as well as the old Android phones aren’t supported by WhatsApp anyway, so the aforementioned reports are some one year late to the party.
“All the news reports that say WhatsApp will stop working on the old iPhones and Android devices that don't run at least iOS 9 or something newer or Android 4.0.3 or something newer from January 1, 2021, aren't saying anything new. These old phones are already not supported. They are just talking about the WhatsApp policy change that was announced in December 2019, and somehow connecting it to January 1, 2021,” WhatsApp itself explained.
So no, no change is coming in January regarding the devices WhatsApp currently supports, and the company too confirmed that all phones currently running the app will run it just flawlessly next month too.