App developers slowly phase out support for older operating systems. It is a part of the ongoing development process that slowly outpaces the old operating systems. WhatsApp recently made it clear that it would stop supporting iOS versions 11 or older.
It means that WhatsApp won’t run on iPhones that do not have iOS 12 or newer OS installed. The news doesn’t come as a surprise because it is common for apps to do for a variety of reasons. If you own an iPhone 5s or newer, you can install iOS 12 and continue using WhatsApp in the future.
Why will WhatsApp stop working on older iOS versions?
App developers have a few valid reasons to restrict the number of operating systems they will support. Firstly, it becomes very difficult to manage the codebase for older devices. As new SDKs are used for development, it becomes cumbersome to write code for older versions.
Another major flaw is the questionable security of older operating systems and the code written for them. App developers will have to maintain different versions of the same app. Moreover, the new OS comes with an enhanced feature set which can be useful in designing and improving the app.
So, WhatsApp and all other app companies discard very old OS as they become obsolete. Imagine maintaining a separate app version just to cater to a small portion of the total users.
iPhone 5S and newer models up to XR support iOS 12. FYI, iOS 16 is in beta now, so clearly, iOS 11 is outdated at this point. If you own an older device, you will have to upgrade soon in order to use your WhatsApp account. You can either upgrade to an iPhone or go for affordable Android phones. Both of them support WhatsApp.
WhatsApp is working on launching the communities feature, which will let an admin manage multiple groups collectively. Other features like hiding the status from specific people and extending the message deletion time to two days. While the features sound wonderful, WhatsApp is still battling cases for imposing a very stern privacy policy that gives no power to opt-out.
