GroupMe for Windows Phone gets a redesign and Audible gets updated too

GroupMe v3.5 looking good

Although there aren’t many new major apps to announce for Windows Phone yet this week, two big titles just received some updates and one has some major changes.

First up is Audible, one of the more requested apps that took a long time to get to Windows Phone. It has now hit version 1.3 as of today. Unfortunately that is about all we can tell you at this point as there was no accompanying changlog. That’s not the first time Audible has done such and update.

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Seeing as that app has had a few bugs for some of our users, we’ll assume that some fixes and tweaks have been made to improve app stability. Let us know if you find any other changes.

The other is GroupMe, the popular chat service that allows you to have chat groups via data connection (or SMS as a backup). We’re big fans of the service, especially since Microsoft technically owns them (well, Skype does at least).

The new look and features of GroupMe version 3.5

Version 3.5 has just gone live in the Marketplace and it has not only bug fixes, but also significant improvements in app performance—words we always like to hear around these parts. In addition, an assortment of new features have been added to make the service even more useful, including:

  • A cleaner, better chat interface
  • Likes!
  • A news feed
  • Tappable URLs
  • Pinch & zoom on pics
  • Hide individual messages
  • Mark all messages as read

We just loaded up the new GroupMe and the app does feel a little zippier but nothing too dramatic. The like-option is interesting though we’re not sure we’ll exactly use it but the rest of those features are certainly welcome.

GroupMe is a cross-platform chat service that’s available on iOS, Android, BlackBerry, any phone with SMS or via the web. We often use it around these parts when we have to be mobile and with the recent site-redesign they’ve implemented, we really like where GroupMe is headed. So if you haven’t tried it yet, now may be a good time.Having said that, messages still had a bit of a delay to them on delivery--hiccup or is that the norm? We're not sure, so let us know in comments.

Pick up the new Audible here and GroupMe version 3.5 here in the Windows Phone Marketplace. Thanks, Steve B., for the Audible tip

Daniel Rubino
Editor-in-chief

Daniel Rubino is the Editor-in-chief of Windows Central. He is also the head reviewer, podcast co-host, and analyst. He has been covering Microsoft since 2007, when this site was called WMExperts (and later Windows Phone Central). His interests include Windows, laptops, next-gen computing, and watches. He has been reviewing laptops since 2015 and is particularly fond of 2-in-1 convertibles, ARM processors, new form factors, and thin-and-light PCs. Before all this tech stuff, he worked on a Ph.D. in linguistics, watched people sleep (for medical purposes!), and ran the projectors at movie theaters because it was fun.