WhatsApp regularly cuts support for its app on older devices. Beyond compatibility issues with updates, security risks are often one of the main reasons for these withdrawals.
“WhatsApp will soon stop working on these phones” . If you are a Geeko reader, your gaze is probably regularly on this type of article. If only to make sure that your smartphone is not part of the list of cited devices. Indeed, from time to time, the developers of WhatsApp announce that the application no longer supports certain models.
There is a constant in these events, which you will no doubt have noticed. Whenever WhatsApp makes a similar claim, it’s always older smartphones that are affected. Devices considered obsolete, for the most part, are no longer updated. For lack of will, and very often of being able. Because our smartphones inevitably end up no longer supported operating system updates. Always. However, if your phone does not follow the rhythm, WhatsApp continues to advance.
” To keep pace with the latest technological advancements, we regularly stop supporting older operating systems to devote our resources to supporting the latest systems,” reads the site’s FAQ. The sentence leaves little room for interpretation. To put it plainly, WhatsApp’s decision responds to commercial logic. Smartphones evolve, and applications are with them, and it is up to users to adapt.
So, occasionally, WhatsApp does the sorting. ” Each year, like other technology companies, we identify the oldest devices and software, and those with the fewest users,” the app says. In other words, those who do not have the “required” features to run WhatsApp and, more broadly, those who no longer benefit from security updates. And who are therefore particularly vulnerable.
The technical constraints can be multiple: some old terminals are simply no longer capable of integrating functions that require more RAM or processor power. Updating an app on a wide range of terminals is expensive and above all requires a lot of optimization work for a wide range of products.