Nokia has released the first public beta of its Nokia Chat app for Windows Phone 7.5 and 8 devices. Similar to software like WhatsApp, Kik, Kakao Talk and Facebook Messenger, Nokia Chat allows cross-platform messaging between Windows Phone, Asha, Symbian and S40 devices.
The first beta includes Canada, along with the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Nigeria, South Africa and a few others, to ease the company’s servers into the load before opening to a wider audience. While the app likely won’t get much play in North America, it stands to be quite popular in countries with established bases of Symbian, Asha and S40 devices, of which there are hundreds of millions still in use.
Windows Phone 8 users can take advantage of lock screen notifications, but all WP users will receive toast push notifications and live tile updates. The app also integrates with Yahoo Messenger, but it would be nice if Nokia could integrate Google and Facebook, as the current solutions on the platform are pretty terrible.
For Windows Phone 8 users, the app can also take advantage of voice dictation, voice commands — example “Chat with Michael Jordan” — as well as lockscreen notifications. The last feature displays a counter informing you of the number of unread messages.
Nokia Chat for Windows Phone is available to download through Nokia Beta Labs.
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