WhatsApp for Android has Finally Been Updated with a Lot Better Design

  WhatsApp, the mother of all cross platform instant messaging apps has finally been updated for Android. The new update doesn’t include any new functionality, but brings a much needed holo design to the UI. This is probably the first time that the app has received a visual face-lift after its release in 2010. The new app design brings an action-bar, new font, expandable notifications, redesigned chat bubbles and the emoticons window. The home-page and preferences page have been updated too. In short, pretty much everything has been given a visual face-lift.

The new action bar.

 

Old conversation UI on the left vs. New on the right

 

Old Preferences page on the left vs. New on the right

Expandable Notification for new messages

The new design isn’t rock stable and contains a few bugs, none which can hamper your user experience though. My only remaining gripe with the app is that the expandable notifications do not contain any option for quickly replying to the messages. Let’s hope that they add it soon. The new update hasn’t been pushed to Play Store yet and so you won’t be receiving any update notification on your phone right now. However, you can download it from the official website:

BUT I STILL WON’T BE USING IT

As a user who waited for several months in the hope of a visual revamp and eventually moved on to another app, Hike — a similar app, but with a better UI design and features, I cannot stress enough how irritating it was to use the old ugly UI of WhatsApp. The new UI is a lot better, but sadly it’s too late for WhatsApp to pull me back now.

Hike

And I’m not the only one who has made the switch. Almost half of my (WhatsApp) contacts have started using Hike as their secondary messaging app. Abhishek Baxi of ZDNet reports how mobile messaging in India is evolving beyond WhatsApp. I’m pretty sure this story applies to other parts of the world as well. WhatsApp may be the most widely used mobile messaging app for now, but other apps have started finding a foothold in this tight market space and WhatsApp is itself responsible for it. I’d like to ask the same question to our readers as well. How many of you still use WhatsApp as your primary mobile messenger app? Have you ever considered moving to some other app?