This morning version 2.12.128 of the private WhatsApp beta rolled out to selected users. This is a slight increase from the 2.12.126 version available to the general public. In terms of new features, there are a few noteworthy ones but overall they are mostly just continued polish and rounding off of existing ones.
According to the site Aggiornamenti Lumia, the following changes were introduced with build 128:
- Fixed display of emoticons (now will be previewed correctly)
- Greatly improved user experience with Windows 10 Mobile
- Introduced "select messages" in the app bar for conversations
- New sound for messages received while using the application (from different conversations)
- In notifications area introduced the ability to enable or disable sound
- Added new option to quickly change your status
The changing of your status refers to canned messages that you can 'quickly' choose as opposed to the default 'Hey there! I am using WhatsApp.' found under Settings > Profile. The only quick thing about it is you can just tap one of the statuses like 'At work' or 'Urgent calls only'. While it is handier than having to type out a message, the digging to get to it is still not so convenient.
Other additions include adding "select messages" in a conversations view making management easier and the ability to disable sounds altogether for in-app alerts.
You can see the changes in red in our screenshots from the latest beta release.
There is mention of "greatly improved user experience with Windows 10 Mobile". However, it is not very clear exactly what that refers to in the app. This build of WhatsApp looks like the previous one in many respects, and nothing is obviously different on our end. Nonetheless, this likely refers to some optimizations in the code making a better user experience.
No word on when these new features percolate to the official, public version of WhatsApp. Usually, there are a few weeks of lag time between the two branches. As usual, we'll keep you posted of when that happens.
Reminder
The public version of WhatsApp that is in the Windows Phone Store does not yet have these features! Please do not ask about how to get access to the private beta, as there is no public sign-up method. Thank you.
Via: Aggiornamenti Lumia; Thanks, Maurizio M., for the tip
