WhatsApp recently announced that the company would end support for older devices on December 31. Starting January 1, WhatsApp will stop working on Windows Phone 8 and BlackBerry devices.
If you are still using a Windows Phone 8 or BlackBerry device, WhatsApp may stop working on your phone at any time.
“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 4.0+, iPhone running iOS 7+, or Windows Phone 8.1+ so that you can continue using WhatsApp,” the company said.
Users of Windows Phone 8 will no longer be allowed to create new accounts. If WhatsApp is already installed and running, there will be no problems but some features may stop functioning at any time.
WhatsApp is ending support for Windows Phone 8 because the new features that are being developed won’t work on the older platform, for example, Microsoft has added many new APIs to Windows Phone 8.1 that would help WhatsApp develop new features for the platform.
On the other hand, WhatsApp is not ending support for Windows Phone 8.1 and Windows 10 Mobile anytime soon, though it remains to be seen how long the company plans to do this.