Social Messaging Beta Gets an Update: Looks Neat

If one had to dedicate the last year to something that transformed the way we use technology in our daily life, it’s gotta be the evolution of networking services in day-to-day life. Popular social networking services like Facebook and Twitter not only got bigger but also added more teeth to their potential uses in the practical world. If Twitter was put to good use during the recent Afghanistan Presidential election episode, Facebook is being increasingly used by HR personnel worldwide for employee profiling. Not surprisingly the year saw an emergence of tons of mobile apps bringing popular networking services to mobile handsets. The latest entry to this genre is Social Messaging from Nokia.

Social Messaging, one of the latest beta apps from Nokia Labs has been doing the rounds on the web and early adopters for a while now and the beta app got an update sometime last month. While the update did fix a few critical bugs, some new ones have surfaced in the latest version. How bothersome are these bugs in practice? Is the app ready for the mainstream users? Find your answers after the break.

Screenshots-

Well, there is a homescreen widget which unfortunately is not yet available for 5800ers like you and me. Nevertheless sans the homescreen widget, there is still a few things that might draw users to this latest app from Nokia. The UI of the Facebook window looks very similar to that of official Facebook app for the symbian platform and twitter looks promising too. Take a look at the demo video below for more info on the app:

What we like?

1. Intuitive UI makes you feel at home

What we don’t like?

1. The “Select Connection” window pop-up way too often, thus preventing doing anything practical from within the app
2. Tweet update and Facebook status update along with other features are still not functional

Verdict

The app is still in its nascent stages and desperately needs a few bug fixes especially the very annoying “Select Connection” window that keeps popping-up every 15-20s! The UI does look very promising and as and when the full feature set is made available, the app can stand tall among some of the other popular networking apps available on the symbian fifth edition platform. This version though is only for early adopters and beta testers and mainstream users need to wait for the next update to make any practical use of the app.

Download Social Messaging Beta for free