WhatsApp comes with app for cheap phones with KaiOS

WhatsApp is releasing an app for KaiOS, the operating system of the Nokia 8110 4g, among others. This will make it possible to buy a phone without a smartphone operating system but with WhatsApp.

A CEO of Nokia licensee HMD confirms WhatsApp’s arrival to KaiOS in a tweet. WhatsApp is on the JioPhone 2, a cheap mobile phone for the Indian market with a qwerty keyboard. WhatsApp is not yet running on the Nokia 8110 4g and HMD has not yet said if and when the chat app will run on the phone.

KaiOS is an operating system for cheap phones, in which Google, among others, invested. KaiOS, which builds on Mozilla’s Firefox OS, also runs Facebook and Google apps such as Assistant, Maps and YouTube in addition to WhatsApp. In many cases this concerns versions that are made with web techniques such as HTML, CSS and JavaScript.

WhatsApp’s support for KaiOS opens the door to the arrival of cheap 4G mobile phones that can do little more than make calls, text and run a small number of other apps like WhatsApp. That category does not yet exist. Google is trying to get Android on cheaper smartphones with Android Go.