The change began at the start of November, leaving many without access to their most-used messaging app.
Whatsapp is undoubtedly the world's most popular messaging app. With more than 2 billion users globally, and an incomprehensible amount of messages - 100 billion - sent every single day on the encrypted instant messaging platform, it's leaps and bounds ahead of its nearest competitors.
Most people use Whatsapp as a means of communicating with friends and family, and while the constant stream of alerts (aka group chat hell) can start to drive you slowly mad, you probably wouldn't know what to do without it. Just remember how stranded we all felt when Whatsapp went down (along with Instagram and Facebook) for six hours last month...
But in bad news for millions of people, Whatsapp has ceased to work on 53 different phone models from today, the start of November. Over the past year, the messaging app has added several new features, including joinable group calls and disappearing messages. But now, the company is phasing out support for older phones so they can concentrate on ensuring the app runs securely on newer models.
It's a mix of iOS and Android phones that are affected, so have a scroll through this list to see if your smartphone is no longer compatible with Whatsapp:
- Galaxy Trend Lite
- Galaxy Trend II
- Galaxy SII
- Galaxy S3 mini
- Galaxy Xcover 2
- Galaxy Core
- Galaxy Ace 2
- Lucid 2
- Optimus F7
- Optimus F5
- Optimus L3 II Dual
- Optimus F5
- Optimus L5
- Best L5 II
- Optimus L5 Dual
- Best L3 II
- Optimus L7
- Optimus L7 II Dual
- Best L7 II
- Optimus F6, Enact
- Optimus L4 II Dual
- Optimus F3
- Best L4 II
- Best L2 II
- Optimus Nitro HD
- Optimus 4X HD
- Optimus F3Q
- ZTE V956
- Grand X Quad V987
- Grand Memo
- Xperia Miro
- Xperia Neo L
- Xperia Arc S
- Alcatel
- Ascend G740
- Ascend Mate
- Ascend D Quad XL
- Ascend D1 Quad XL
- Ascend P1 S
- Ascend D2
- Archos 53 Platinum
- HTC Desire 500
- Caterpillar Cat B15
- Wiko Cink Five
- Wiko Darknight
- Lenovo A820
- UMi X2
- Run F1
- THL W8
- iPhone SE
- iPhone 6S
- iPhone 6S Plus
While there may be logistical reasoning behind phasing out Whatsapp's functionality on all the above smartphones, it's a frustrating cycle of tech companies forcing consumer's hands to always have the latest kit. The iPhone models that's affected by Whatsapp's update came out in in September 2015, with prices ranging from £539 - £789. Sure, that was six years ago and there have been numerous new models released since, but it's an expensive thing to have to buy new every few years.
So, who's in the market for a new phone, then?
