Hi Janus,
Oh I know what are you talking about, I did have the same problem long ago cuz my Samsung version is quite old.
Anyways, what I did with Whatsapp (and a few games) was to get the Old Version of APK from third web but you have to try it one by one to see which one works for you and avoid to upgrade it.
I'm new here so I can not post links yet but just copy/paste the below lines on your browser. These are two different sites:
whatsapp-messenger.en.uptodown.com/android/old
apkmirror.com/apk/whatsapp-inc/whatsapp/
Cheeers!