WhatsApp will continue supporting Android Gingerbread all the way up until 2020

That is to say, the company has just released the latest revision of its platform support plans for WhatsApp, outlining exactly when legacy OS users will be forcibly cut off from the service. Previous versions of the plan killed off support for Windows Phone 7, iOS 6, and Android versions 2.2 and below. The latest update, however, gives us some hard deadlines for a couple of other platforms as well, after which WhatsApp will no longer work:

And while the deadlines for most other platforms seem pretty reasonable, the one for Android 2.3.7 Marshmallow is certainly eyebrow-raising. At least it is until you take into consideration the fact that WhatsApp enjoys great popularity in developing countries, where older devices are much more common. So clearly someone at WhatsApp did the math, and concluded these customers are important – a commendable move from the most popular messaging app in the world.

However, it's certainly worth noting that "works on Android Gingerbread" is a bit of an overstatement. To quote the blog post, "Because we will no longer actively develop for these platforms, some features may stop functioning at any time." So the 2020 deadline is actually the point at which the service will start actively refusing, instead of quietly tolerating, serving Gingerbread-based devices, which by that time will be about nine years old.

source: WhatsApp via Android Police