WhatsApp will no longer be supported on select older versions of Android and iOS starting today. The instant messaging giant has been warning its users about this for months now, and moving forward, Android version 2.3.7 and older as well as iOS 8 and older will not be supported by WhatsApp. Affected users will lose all of their chats if they haven’t backed them up or exported yet. This comes just a month after WhatsApp shut down support for Windows Phone users.
The company had announced this deadline last year, giving users plenty of time to either update their phones to newer Android and iOS versions, or save their chat history. In any case, phones bought in or before 2015 may have a chance of running on these older versions of Android and iOS, and the users with older software must check for Android updates in case any are pending to avoid losing access to WhatsApp support. If you are one of the affected users, you next steps should be to save your chats as soon as possible, to avoid losing all data. You should also consider switching to a newer device with updated software. Another reason to go for newer Android version is that they come with fixes for vulnerabilities and security enhancements.
To save chats, open the WhatsApp > tap on the ‘three dots’ on the top right of the chat screen > Tap on More > Export Chat > and select whether you want to include media or not. Select the platform you want to save your chats to, for instance you can choose to send it to your email account, where you can keep those saved chats to come back to later. This option to save chats isn’t available in Germany, unfortunately.
As mentioned, we recommend affected users to switch to newer smartphones that run on fresh Android and iOS versions to ensure access to WhatsApp. WhatsApp recommends upgrading to phones running on Android OS 4.0.3 and newer, and iOS 9 and newer.