Outside USA, WhatsApp is a must or you are simply disconnected.
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WhatsApp to Drop Support for These iPhones Starting May 2025
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It is a bit tricky but still possible. You need a clear iPhone with no contacts, thats it. BTW this is how you fool GetContact app for stalking phone numbers – you just have a 2nd phone and add only the contacts you want to find out about.
As for the contacts access, as far as I understand it doesn’t upload them to their servers and doesn’t sync into Facebook profile. Messenger – yes, but not WhatsApp since app was not developed by Facebook originally.
Telegram is much more evil in that sense, stores contacts and all the chats in the cloud (except encrypted which you need to explicitly create and person you communicate with must accept the secret chat invitation) and synced them thru your devices. Sometimes it even fails to delete them and re-synces them back to the device.
Whats good about WhatsApp is that when you delete an app from the phone, entering the same phone number and re-signing into app leads you into void and creates a fresh new account. Literally “what happens on your device stays on your device”, with exception of the devices of people you send messages to.
Even if they can x-ref, nothing holds you from NOT using or creating Facebook or Instagram. Or you can do what I did: create fake profile with one of physical sim cards. I even fooled facebook when they suspected my profile is fake: I stole Arstechnica selfie that they generated with AI, edited it a bit to look like a selfie from old smartphone, replaced exif and Facebook took it as a brand new coin. Profile works, I use it to browse groups and watch “shorts” or how do they call their videos
Also WhatsApp is just plain simpler than iMessage. Idk how people in US use it, in Europe writing to iMessage often feels like violating someone’s private space🤣 people literally receive SMS here
Some of the EU resolutions just fail to work unless they take an action. For example it is forbidden to add water to grape juice to make more wine and sell it as commercial wine, nevertheless lots of Italian and French producers do just that and cite that they have very sugary grapes or not so much grape juice out of them. I doubt EU can or even wants to fine all these producers, golden goose lays the golden eggs and customers seem not to care about reduced flavors or less tannins, everyone is happy
Several clubs/hobby groups I've joined use WhatsApp so I "had" to install it. However, I never gave it access to my contacts. It's possible and I don't recall it being hard.
However, if you don't give them access to your contacts, you can't lookup people's contact info in the app to send them a message. At some point communications software needs to know something about the person you are trying to contact to contact them.
Agree -- I have no interest in my contacts going to Facebook but not Apple either. Generally the more a software/service wants my contacts or similar the less I want them to have it.
Though at this point Microsoft gets quite a bit of them and a lot of other stuff via LinkedIn...
Given the ubiquity of WhatsApp outside of the US, are moves like this a primary decision driver for upgrading?
Do people still use What's app?
I deleted WhatsApp after Apple introduced RCS with iOS 18. Most of the people I message have iPhone's so we iMessage. And the few that don't, we are able to use RCS. For me personally I see little point in using a third party app, when I have the included Messages app that now gives me all the same messaging functionality.
In all over the EU as well. Even when they have an iPhone we have to chat on WhatsApp
Everyday. Literally everyone I know uses it
It is not “just a simple messaging app”, besides they are not really dropping support for older phones, they are dropping support for the versions of iOS that those phones are able to operate with.
It that really surprising?
You can talk FREE unlimited overseas calls, load and clear 👍
Don't think many will be using these older devices. So impact will be less. Good that these older devices were supported till now.
The problem is, they'd have to go against individuals and it just isn't worth the time or money. When an employee uses WhatsApp on a personal device and has their business contact list on the phone as well, that can get the company into hot water, if they are audited and it is found out...
But they can't go after WhatsApp itself, as it is the use of WhatsApp that is the problem, not that WhatsApp exists...
Yeah exactly how it works. The funny thing is that a large number of iPhone users I know don't know what iMessage is. WhatsApp is literally the default messaging app in Europe.
business-wise, European business people use the app. From here on, I am not sure what will do now.
Literally everybody uses WhatsApp. I've lived in 4 EU countries and everybody uses WhatsApp. It's impossible to find someone who'd use iMessage, even when they have an iPhone and they refuse to use iMessage.
I feel like a lot of people don't understand it on here. You can't make people switch to another messaging app either.
Many don't understand I have 5 messaging apps for clients around the world. This app has an impact on us here who use the app with euro people. Viber is used also, but not to the extent of WhatsApp
Honestly, it's just not the App for me, secondly I personally prefer iMessage over WhatsApp, because for the lack of support on the iPad, for instance.
That's simply not possible unless you're all using phones without cell service.
SMS still exists, you can't turn it off. And if somebody has an iPhone, it's gonna default to using iMessage if available, and you'd have to actively turn it off.
Sorry, that's just nonsense.
Let me reword it for you:
Outside of the USA (specifically in the EU and UK) WhatsApp is so ubiquitous that if you don't have it on your phone and don't use it, you are not as well connected as everyone else is.
Yes, of course you can still communicate with people with other services, but A: Other people might not want to communicate that way, and B: You would not be able to access the numerous WhatsApp group communications so commonly used here, or C: You would not be accessible for audio/video communication everyone here conduct on WhatsApp when done cross borders (to save on call cost) or when performed from phones other than iPhones (not everyone has FaceTime). Yes, there are other apps doing the same thing, but everyone here use WhatsApp and nobody is going to change it by complaining (or by reacting to posts with Angry emojis). It is not hard to understand why it has become pretty much an essential service.
Unfortunately true, although my family uses Signal, one daughter uses WhatsApp as well. My wife uses Threema for business at work.
My eldest daughter only uses it for the kindergarten, but nothing else.