The messaging app WhatsApp reaches the feature phones. If you have a phone like the Nokia 8110 or similar, you can now talk to all your contacts through this popular service. Without a doubt, one of the applications that these devices needed to be more attractive in those markets that it is focused on, despite the simplicity of its operating system.
Feature phones can now use WhatsApp
The feature phones they are phones really designed for emerging markets like India. With more basic features and an operating system completely different from the popular Android and iOS, the lowest cost and details such as a battery life of more than two weeks are key. For this reason, although there are alternatives such as Android Go that also seek to reduce the requirements at the hardware level, it is these "basic phones" that continue to gain ground for now.
Well, these devices have KaiOS, an operating system created in the United States by Kai Technologies and whose purpose is none other than to offer a real alternative to iOS and Android within emerging markets.
Based on the now extinct Firefox OS, the idea behind KaiOS is to offer a highly optimized system in terms of resources and capable of working perfectly on devices that do not have a touch screen. In other words, KaiOS is a vitaminized version of those systems that existed years ago in classic phones with their numeric keypad and where, to type the f key, you had to press the key with the number 3 three times.
Well, now from the hand of Facebook comes the version of WhatsApp for KaiOS. A development that has not been easy or fast, but that both Kai Technologies and Mark Zuckerberg's company were interested in carrying out. Thus, available from already in the KaiStore app store, users with one of these basic phones will be able to install the messaging application used by millions of users around the world.
In markets such as Spain or many others, such as Latin America, etc., these types of phones do not have such a level of penetration. Android is king and even if they are not high-end phones, it is difficult to see someone with one of these feature phones. But in emerging markets the opposite is true, in India for example. They are very popular there and having WhatsApp is quite interesting.
At the functionality level, the WhatsApp version for feature phones It will have differences with respect to the one that can be found on both Android and iOS. What does not change is that it will allow both sending text messages and making calls, and it will also include end-to-end encryption.
To run it only needs the device to have 256 or 512 MB of RAM memory and it will come pre-installed on selected devices starting in the third quarter of the year. Meanwhile, any user of a feature phone with KaiOS you can download and install hassle-free right away.