WhatsApp Beta gets UI tweaks, upcoming update to introduce Snapchat Stories-like feature

2 min. read

Published on January 5, 2017

published on January 5, 2017

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WhatsApp today released a new update for the WhatsApp Beta app on Windows Phone. The update introduces some minor user interface changes to the app, making it a bit more modern. As you can see, the latest update makes the pivot UI on the app more like the pivot style on MDL2 (the Windows 10 UI) rather than the original MDL guidelines.

However, even after the update, the pivot style still isn’t similar to how the Windows 10 UI is supposed to look. WhatsApp has been making a number of improvements to the app UI over the past several months, giving it a more modern look inspired by Windows 10’s design, but the company still has a long way to go.

Whether WhatsApp will make a Universal Windows Platform (UWP) app remains to be seen, the company clearly doesn’t want to leave out their Windows Phone 8.1 customers (which is the majority of Windows Phone users) but they are missing out on some new opportunities by not making the jump to the Universal Windows Platform. If WhatsApp decides to make a UWP app for Windows 10 devices, the company would be able to bring its app to a bunch of different devices, including PCs, smartphones, the Xbox One, the HoloLens, and even the Surface Hub.

It is worth noting that there are some “hidden” features in this update which you can’t access at the moment — this includes GIF search which will let you search for GIFs on Giphy and share them on a conversation. Additionally, WhatsApp is also bringing support for Statuses, which is essentially a clone of Snapchat Stories.