Back in February of this year, WhatsApp announced that they would be ending support for Windows Phone 7, Nokia S40, and Nokia Symbian S60 smartphone devices. “When we started WhatsApp in 2009, people’s use of mobile devices looked very different from today,” the official statement read. “The Apple App Store was only a few months old. About 70 percent of smartphones sold at the time had operating systems offered by BlackBerry and Nokia. Mobile operating systems offered by Google, Apple and Microsoft – which account for 99.5 percent of sales today – were on less than 25 percent of mobile devices sold at the time. As we look ahead to our next seven years, we want to focus our efforts on the mobile platforms the vast majority of people use.”
This month, WhatsApp seems to have changed its tune somewhat and, while they’ll still be ending support for Windows Phone 7 devices at the end of 2016, owners of Nokia S40, and Nokia Symbian S60 phones have been given an extra half year to enjoy their retro tech. Support for them will now end on June 30th 2017, six months later than originally intended.
Do you still use one of these devices and does this decision affect you? Are you surprised people are even still using these at all? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below.
