what to do in 2016 with fine working HTC Desire hardware from 2010? I use since 6 years a HTC Desire. I love that phone and it works great.


  The HTC Desire (codenamed Bravo)[4] is the first smartphone of the
  Desire series developed by HTC. It was announced on 16 February 2010
  and released in Europe and Australia in the second quarter of the same
  year. The HTC Desire was HTC's third flagship phone running
  Android,[5] 2.1 Eclair which can be upgraded to 2.2 Froyo or 2.3
  Gingerbread.[6] Internally it bears a strong resemblance to the Nexus
  One, but differs in some features.


I run Android 2.2. I tried the 2.3 upgrade, but it was terrible. I was forced to downgrade.


  system    Launched with Android 2.1 Eclair Upgradeable to Android 2.3
  Gingerbread1 (Though only 2.2 is supported by HTC)


WhatsApp announced that they will discontinue Android 2.2 support end of 2016: So, by the end of 2016, we will be ending support for WhatsApp Messenger on the following mobile platforms:

It's my top used App.

So now my question: what to do in 2016 with a fine working HTC Desire from 2010? I don't wish to buy a new phone, but I wish to use WhatsApp.

I don't wish to install experimental software. At the moment the phone runs 99.99% stable.
Try a Cyanogen Mod version for it..

I used HTC Dev site to unlock the boot loader, And then installed CWM Recovery and flashed several custom ROMs, Wich all seem to be based off of CM9 etc....