WhatsApp ‘multi-device 2.0’ update could allow for multiple smartphone connections

Damien Wilde | Sep 28 2021 - 3:03 am PT

After a long time waiting, WhatsApp introduced multi-device support earlier this year but with certain connected device limitations. However, it seems that a potential “multi-device 2.0” update could enable your secondary smartphone to use your “main” WhatsApp account.

One of the biggest criticisms of the current multi-device support in WhatsApp has been the inability to connect multiple smartphones to one telephone number. At the moment, you can only connect one smartphone plus four other devices, including things like computers, tablets, and Facebook’s own Portal devices.

When these four devices are connected, you don’t need to be connected to your smartphone to get messages and take or place calls from your account. While this is still a fairly good solution for most people, it seems that these limitations could be removed with “multi-device 2.0” for WhatsApp according to WABetaInfo.

After delving into the code, they have found evidence of support for secondary mobile device connections. While it’s not concrete as yet, it appears that the single device limit could be removed in a future WhatsApp with what WABetaInfo has dubbed “multi-device 2.0.”

Effectively, with “multi-device 2.0” this would mean you can have your backup or secondary device linked to your “main” handset in a similar manner to that of WhatsApp Web or the multi-device beta that is now available via an opt-in process. The screenshot shared shows a splash screen for another connected device, where recent messages are downloaded in the same way that your tablet or PC would with the current, somewhat limited implementation.

We see other rival services like Telegram work across multiple smartphones and devices with relative ease — albeit without some of the end-to-end encryption security benefits — but “multi-device 2.0” for WhatsApp could be a big deal. Unfortunately, no details were shared on when we could see the feature come to the Android or iOS apps. We’d wager it might be a while.