“Given that both the operating systems are more than six years old, the change should have little to no impact at all”
Facebook-owned popular messaging service WhatsApp to end support for smartphones running Android 2.3.7 and iOS 7 operating systems after February 1st, 2020. The company updated the FAQs section on its official website mentioning that “users’ can no longer create new accounts, nor reverify existing accounts,” but can continue using the service. Given that both the operating systems are now more than six years old, the change should have little to no impact at all.
Furthermore, WhatsApp also said that support for Microsoft’s Windows Phone operating system would no longer be available after December 31st 2019 and the app might not be even available in the Microsoft Store after July 1st 2019. Notably, Microsoft itself is cutting off Windows 10 mobile OS support in December this year and asked users’ to switch to Android or iOS. WhatsApp recommends using Android 4.0.3 or later/ iOS 8 and above and select phones running KaiOS 2.5.1+, including JioPhone and JioPhone 2.
Separately, WhatsApp’s latest 2.19.177 beta for Android recently added support for PiP mode finally. As the name suggests, this allows users to watch videos in the background in a floating pop-up window on any screen while performing some other task. This feature also lets users watch videos in a PiP mode while jumping between chats within the app. Since the PiP mode is still in the beta testing stage, it might be a while before the stable rolls out to everyone.