Remember the Samsung Galaxy Trend series that featured devices like the Galaxy Trend II and the Galaxy Trend Lite that were on sale in Kenya for a while? Or the indefatigable Galaxy SII? Or the Galaxy SIII mini? The Galaxy Ace 2?
Remember when Huawei still branded its devices Ascend? And LG Optimus? Just like Samsung’s Galaxy?
You may be wondering what that trip down the memory lane has to do with anything but that’s the whole point of this article. Those devices are now supposed to be just that: memories. No, not the Maroon 5 song but you get the drift.
The aforementioned Samsung Galaxy smartphones and several others in the Huawei Ascend and LG Optimus line ups make up a list of over 40 devices whose users won’t be able to access WhatsApp starting on November 1, 2021.
The full list is as below:
- Alcatel: One Touch Evo 7
- Huawei: Ascend G740, Ascend Mate, Ascend D Quad XL, Ascend D1 Quad XL, Ascend P1 S, and Ascend D2.
- LG: Lucid 2, Optimus F7, Optimus F5, Optimus L3 II Dual, Optimus F5, Optimus L5, Optimus L5 II, Optimus L5 Dual, Optimus L3 II, Optimus L7, Optimus L7 II Dual, Optimus L7 II, Optimus F6, Enact , Optimus L4 II Dual, Optimus F3, Optimus L4 II, Optimus L2 II, Optimus Nitro HD and 4X HD, and Optimus F3Q.
- Samsung: Galaxy Trend Lite, Galaxy Trend II, Galaxy SII, Galaxy S3 mini, Galaxy Xcover 2, Galaxy Core and Galaxy Ace 2.
- Sony: Xperia Miro, Sony Xperia Neo L, Xperia Arc S.
- ZTE: Grand S Flex, ZTE V956, Grand X Quad V987 and Grand Memo.
- Others: Archos 53 Platinum, HTC Desire 500, Caterpillar Cat B15, Wiko Cink Five, Wiko Darknight, Lenovo A820, UMi X2, Faea F1 and THL W8.
Why is this so?
Nothing untoward. It has become something of a tradition for WhatsApp to end support for older device models every other year. In the case of the above-listed devices, they are running older versions of Android and, obviously, there are few of them in use around the world to warrant keeping the kind of resources required to continue supporting them.
According to a statement on its website, WhatsApp will, going forward, only support devices running on Android 4.1, Jelly Bean.
Last month, Google ended Play Services support for Android Jelly Bean, effectively killing the dated version of the world’s most popular mobile operating system.
