From time to time, WhatsApp deprives its applications of support for older versions of operating systems. The last time this happened was in December 2020. Now the team of the messenger, owned by Facebook, announced the upcoming discontinuation of support for a number of outdated operating systems.
According to the official WhatsApp FAQ page, the world’s most used instant messaging service will no longer run on Android 4.0.3 Ice Cream Sandwich, iOS 9 and KaiOS 2.5.0 as of November 1st of this year. After that, you need Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, iOS 10, or KaiOS 2.5.1 to use WhatsApp. In addition, the messenger team says that, regardless of the iOS version, the application will not work on jailbroken iPhones.
Since we are talking about the end of support for fairly old versions of mobile platforms; the vast majority of users will not notice the changes.
WhatsApp will allow you to hide the time of visiting the messenger from individual users
Most modern instant messengers allow showing contacts when the user last opened the corresponding application. Many people disable this feature, but it is usually impossible to choose who can see the presence and who cannot. The developers of WhatsApp came up with a convenient alternative solution.
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According to the portal WABetaInfo, known for accurate leaks about the newest beta versions of WhatsApp; new messenger tools will allow you to determine who exactly will be able to see certain parts of the profile. For example, “Was online”, “Profile photo” and “View contact” can now be seen either by everyone or by no one; unlike some instant messengers, there are no finer settings. Now the WhatsApp team is testing the ability to exclude some contacts from those who can see status and other data.
This option, for example, will allow you to hide “Was online” for some intrusive contacts without disabling viewing for everyone else. The same goes for other additional information, including the ability to view your profile photo. It is worth noting that the function is two-way – if the user has disabled viewing for someone; he himself will not be able to get acquainted with the data of the contact.
So far, there has been information about the preparation of the function for iOS; but in the future, it will be available to all smartphones compatible with WhatsApp. This flexibility can be very important in the modern world, when all kinds of persecutors are actively using data from social networks and instant messengers to track the activity of victims. It is known that there is even a group of detective programs in app stores that systematically track the time spent online of specific users and compare this information with the time of presence of others.