“To keep pace with the latest technological advancements, we regularly stop supporting older operating systems to devote our resources to supporting the latest systems”, explains the mobile app, which reportedly has nearly two billion active users each month. Several models that were very successful in the early 2010s are on the list of smartphones likely to lose access to the application, such as the iPhone 5 and 5c, or the Samsung Galaxy S2 and S3.
As of January 1, 2023, to be able to retain access to WhatsApp, users must have a smartphone with a version higher than iOS 12.1 for Apple or Android 4.1. However, the number of people using this latest version is limited: in 2021, only 0.2% of smartphones were running Android 4.1 or an earlier version.