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A ROUND-UP OF THE LATEST NEWS IN THE DIGITAL WORLD

TIME TO SAY BYE BYE BLACKBERRY?

WE could be coming to the end of an era in the mobile world – the end might be nigh for the once-mighty BlackBerry.

Some years ago now, the company stopped making its own phones to concentrate on building its software, which is now a variant of Android.

It licensed its name out to manufacturers, the biggest of which was the Chinese company TCL.

This week TCL revealed that it would stop making BlackBerry branded phones at the end of August.

While there are still a few minor phone-makers in certain countries, unless someone else picks up the baton from TCL it’s likely more or less the end for BlackBerry.

TCL meanwhile is expected to start churning out phones under its own brand name.

WHATSAPP UPDATE WILL LEAVE USERS ON OLDER PHONES OUT OF THE LOOP

IF you’re still rocking an older smartphone with an out-of-date OS, WhatsApp will have stopped working for you by now.

If you are wondering why it is because WhatsApp has been updated to include some of the latest security features and that means saying goodbye to support on older operating systems.

Specifically, if your phone runs either Android 2.3.7 or older, or iOS 8 or older you’ll be out of luck.

Most users will be able to update their OS to continue to use WhatsApp, but some phones will not be able to update as they don’t support the latest software.

Users of the iPhone 4 (which, to be fair, is now almost 10 years old), for example, will be out of luck as it will only run iOS 7.

It might be time for that upgrade!