Over the weekend, a new version of WhatsApp Messenger became available in the Windows Phone Store. That version for awhile was available for download to the public, which struck us as very odd considering the nature of betas is to get issues fixed in a controlled group rather than the public. It was even more strange when not just one but two updates were released for the app before the mistake was discovered.
The “open beta” should never have been published in the Windows Phone Store in the first place and is now removed.
We’ve confirmed, though, that was indeed supposed to be the case. The “open beta” should never have been published in the Windows Phone Store and, as of today, that former beta has been removed and the beta has been taken private. Yes we are a part of it, but will no longer be reporting on the beta version. That being said, you can still find the latest news on the public version here.
We actually received reports as of yesterday that some users were unable to access the beta link, but many were still accessing it fine. This led us into looking into it a little further and discovered that this was, indeed, an error on WhatsApp’s part. It appears the old beta version is no longer being developed, however, so if you do have it on your devices, you might as well remove it as it’s basically a dummy version now.
The best news about this, though, is it shows WhatsApp’s dedication to Windows Phone development, so WP fans won’t have to wait long for updates as they do for many other apps we cover. Silver lining.