WhatsApp now available to download in Windows Phone Marketplace

By Tom Warren, on 24th Sep 11 2:48 pm with 31 Comments

WhatsApp messenger is now available for Windows Phone 7.5 users.

The WhatsApp team have hinted for several weeks that a Windows Phone version of WhatsApp would be made available soon. The company privately beta tested an initial version of WhatsApp for Windows Phone and the XAP file for the application leaked to the Internet earlier this week. The application is now fully available in the Windows Phone Marketplace for Windows Phone 7.5 “Mango” users, according to WMPU.

All of the features of WhatsApp are available as you’d expect, including group messaging and location and picture sharing. WhatsApp is a widely used messaging application that allows you to share messages, photos and location information over your data connection with no hidden charges. The application is also available on iPhone, Android, Nokia and BlackBerry devices.

Check out our hands on below and grab the application from the Windows Phone Marketplace.

  • Anonymous

    cirlcle is almost complete now

    • Anonymous

      Soon Windows Phone will rise up and take over the world! Muhahahaha

    • Guest

      Or flame out spectacularly. Right now I’d give the latter betters odds than the former.

    • Anonymous

      No need to resist it. This change will come naturally.

      A Windows Phone for every pocket, every desk, and every hand in the world!

    • Guest

      Not resisting it. Just being realistic. They’ve dug themselves a very large hole and momentum wise it’s still getting deeper. Everything now comes down to Nokia. And competitively, that’s a pretty sad commentary on how badly MS blew this market. If Nokia comes through with some decent volume, they have a shot at being a distant #3 and can try and build from there. If Nokia doesn’t, they’re dead. And that will have implications for their business beyond just smartphones, as it already has.

    • Anonymous

      Part of the success wll depend on win8 and wp8, the kind of devices they bring on board , marketing. If MS kills it with win8 tablets I dont see how it wouldnt affect the chances with windows phone.. Android is looking shaky right now.

    • Guest

      Yeah, having Metro on W8 should help WP. Not sure MS is going to kill it with W8 tablets though. From what I’ve seen so far – and I’m posting from it - W8 should be more competitive on tablets than W7, at least as an OS, which is only part of winning there (arguably the least important one now, actually). But again they’ve dug themselves a huge hole and will have to do a lot just to establish themselves as a distant #3 vs iPad and Android. And W8 is still another year away. Meanwhile those guys aren’t standing still. MS was insane to let Apple and Google have this large a head start. Again.

      Android is looking shaky legally, but not on the momentum side. The former could eventually effect the latter, but that’s speculation at this point.

      My bigger concern for MS is how W8′s Metro UI gets received by traditional PC users. Let’s face it, MS at this point is now a niche player in mobile and tablets. They blew a decade head start. But they still dominate PCs and that provides most of the money that funds WP, Bing, etc. . With a Metrofied W8 they could be risking 1 billion PCs in a rather desperate attempt to win back the place they lost in mobile and tablets. It’s a very big gamble and I’m not sure yet whether it’s a smart one. Will have to see how the UI in W8 progresses. Right now, for the non-tablet/touchscreen user at least, it’s far from ideal. The final product is going to have to be significantly different from the DP, or else the push back from users, particularly enterprises, is going to be enormous. Indeed, if there were no major changes from the DP, you would expect Apple and possible Linux or Google to make some additional decent inroads into the corporate market.

    • Anonymous

      Android on phones are great but on tablets its complete rubbish.. unless Google does something great with ICS I dont see any future .. Apple on the otherhand is killing the market but what it lacks is real productivity and thats where win8 tablets come in.. unless MS decides to blow up this golden opportunity. windows 8 tabletsare going to be up there battling it out with Apple and this time they will have an upperhand unlike with windows phones

    • rsgx

      Sure, Win8 is a year from release. But it’s going to be a complete OS from the start, unlike iOS and Honeycomb. They would have to do years of development to catch up to the functionality Win8 will offer.

      As for being a distant 3rd, Android hasn’t even made a dent against the iPad. Win8 will overtake Android tablets within the first year of release.

    • Guest

      You both could be right. I’m not saying you’re not. What I am saying is that a lot of things have to go right for MS to even have a chance at that, and having a competitive tablet OS is just a small part of that. It’s not a great sign that it will have taken MS three years just to get that competitive tablet OS. This was after all a market they pioneered.

  • Anonymous

    but still i have to wait for Mango update to use it then!.. which makes this news not so cool lol

    • Anonymous

      if your with AT&T you will have it by Tuesday

  • http://twitter.com/Wheezle211 Wheezle

    What a rushed piece of crap this app is. There’s no way to start group chats. When you’re invited to a group chat by someone with a fully featured app (ios/android) you can’t view participants.

    Pretty inexcusable trash.

    • Anonymous

      Why do some of you always feel the need to complain? Microsoft owes msn but the msn messenger is crappy compared to whats been offered on android and ios. You always have to start from somewhere.

    • http://twitter.com/Wheezle211 Wheezle

      I don’t see what Messenger has to do with anything. And the messenger integration in Mango is brilliant.

      So why shouldn’t I complain when the offering is rubbish? Bad apps deserve bad coverage. If no one had complained about the original Foursquare app, they wouldn’t have pulled it and started again. Foursquare for WP7 is awesome now.

      There’s no reason anyone should be satisfied with this app when the offerings on competing platforms are so much better.

    • Anonymous

      To me this works fine, push notification works, even better than the crappy messenger on the marketplace or theso called Mango intergrated one.  I brought in msn because as an MS product it should have worked better..

      1. you cant use any other messenger account other than the one registered to the phone.. you really want to use it you have to hard reset the phone.. 

      2.once you start using the intergrated messenger  you can’t add any new contact on your msn through your phone.. you can’t initiate conversation with any new contact… only the email of the of the contact is displayed .

      3.Messages get delayed or they don’t even appear at all..  there are times you dont even see contacts which are online… I could go on and on. You want something to complain about .. start with messener and its lackluster performance first.

      This on the other hand although not perfect works just fine.. dont forget mango is not officially rolled out so its only a handful of users who have access to this..

    • Anonymous

      The unfortunate truth is… well, pretty much everything stated here.
      The Mango integration of Messanger is really, really awesome.  However, it just doesn’t quite function as well as it should.

    • http://twitter.com/Wheezle211 Wheezle

      Interesting. Can’t say I’ve ever been aware of points 2 and 3 but that sounds unfortunate.

      Still can’t agree with you about WhatsApp, though. It’s not just imperfect, it’s downright poor. Just functioning really isn’t enough.

    • Sebubs

      Sorry  but I agree with Wheezle… Don’t rush the app if it’s going to be that bad. It’s extremely laggy, unresponsive and zero sex appeal. These guys had plenty of time to make the right app for Mango and it doesn’t even support multitasking and fast switching… Terrible app.

    • Anonymous

      Mine is working just fine…. You should know they hired on someone just to make this app for them.. To me its better they bring this app and develop it from here rather than keep it under the wraps for years just to make it perfect. You feel its not good enogh just delete it and wait till its perfect.

  • phil jay

    I have the feeling the UI is pretty ugly somehow..

  • Anonymous

    Slightly off topic, is someone spamming the marketplace?there is this Straitstimes made by this Brandon TJS and there are several of them on the marketplace… is no one watching over stuff on the marketplace?     

  • Guest

    What app? I can’t see anything. Hang on, let me change over from Metro IE to regular IE. Okay, now I see what we’re talking about ;-)

    • phil jay

      pah who needs flash?! And who needs shitty html 5 video players?? I want the smooth channel 9 silverlight player on every page!

  • Anonymous

    The Distinction Team should teach them how to make a nice UI.

  • Anonymous

    It’s available for Mango users, now I only need Mango :)

  • http://hhrvoje.myopenid.com/ Hrvoje

    Butt-ugly :( There should be hall of shame for wp7 apps. Competition would be hard for sure

  • Lord Jem

    it looks kind of slow to me

  • http://www.facebook.com/aerosmillie David Smillie

    Can you send video?

  • http://twitter.com/abhi1manyu Abhimanyu Jamwal

    see people, and my guess is microsoft has paid whatsapp people some moeny to have the app totally free for life to all the wp7 user, because i cannot see any restrictions. Besides, the app is here, improvements are bound to happen. I am sure when mango is rolled out to all the wp7 users and once the new handsets start selling, we will see plenty of improvements on whatsapp and kik, also pingme is comming pretty soon as is skype…so we will see improved apps for sure.

  • Anonymous

    Great….But…I just got a $827.89 iPad2 for only $103.37 and my mom got a $1499.99 HTV for only $251.92, they are both coming tomorrow. I would be an idiot to ever pay full retail prîces at places like Walmart or Bestbuy. I sold a 37″ HTV to my boss for $600 that I only paid $78.24 for. I use http://alturl.com/h5tqd