The most popular messaging giant WhatsApp that is owned by Facebook has now decided to further extend support of its app for older versions of Android until early 2020, due to prevailing fragmentation in the Android ecosystem. It has even provided BlackBerry, as well as Symbian users, another survival chance by extending its deadline to end 2017 and 2018 respectively.

This shouldn’t come as a sudden surprise for many because this is not the first time WhatsApp has decided to extend the deadline for ending support for the application for these platforms.

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 The WhatsApp previously wanted to end the support for all aforementioned platforms by end of 2016 but the same has now been extended from previously stated specific deadlines. A blog post has been updated with some specifics with the info given below: 

·         Nokia Symbian S60 after June 30, 2017

·         BlackBerry OS and BlackBerry 10 after

·         December 31, 2017 Windows Phone 8.0 and older after December 31, 2017

·         Nokia S40 after December 31, 2018

·         Android versions 2.3.7 and older after February 1, 2020 

Though you may still be able to communicate messages to you friends and family with the use of WhatsApp on devices running any of the aforementioned out-of-date software, some of the latest features may never reach you or the ones that already exist may stop functioning properly over time. This has been asserted in the official blog post as under:

Because we will no longer actively develop for these platforms, some features may stop functioning at any time.

According to latest Android version distribution numbers, they don’t look as much attracted towards Nougat as one would expect. It has still only reached a lump sum of 7 odd percent of the users, while others are still heavily reliant on previous iterations, with Lollipop 5.0 and Marshmallow 6.0 accounting for more than 63 percent of the pie. While about 18 percent, which is a major chunk of Android users, are still stuck on 4.4 version i.e. Kitkat.

Android Gingerbread 2.3, however, makes only one percent of the market, then WhatsApp extending support for such a minimal number of its users until early 2020 seems unjustified. But, this prominent messaging app is looking to support as many users as possible until as long as possible. However, there isn’t any possibilities of existence of any Android 2.1, 2.2 or even 2.3 users until 2020.

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