Nokia updates their social messaging app Pulse with new features in latest beta

By Daniel Rubino
last updated

Nokia is back to updating a lot of their core apps one of which we completely forgot about: Pulse.

We last covered Nokia Pulse when it was announced at Nokia World back in fall 2011. It’s Nokia’s social-app and at the time we had little use for it—there were no Lumias on the market and Nokia’s service wasn’t exactly all that feature-rich.

Today, Nokia announced that Pulse Beta (yup, it’s still not ready for official release) is going to version 0.9 within in the next day or two (ours is still at 0.8 in the Marketplace). The good news is there are plenty of new features coming with 0.9 that are making us reconsider using this app:

  • You can now sign-in on Nokia Pulse with your Facebook account
  • You can start a new conversation as soon as you open Nokia Pulse
  • The Nokia Pulse live tile now shows more information about unread messages
  • The overall performance of Nokia Pulse has been improved
  • You can now consolidate multiple email addresses for a person…
  • …and more easily correct a misspelled email address
  • Your friend who aren’t using Nokia Pulse just yet will get a direct link to the mobile client for their specific phone for a mobile Nokia Pulse experience

Nokia Pulse is kind of powerful. It’s basically a messaging app on steroids. For instance it allows you to send mapping information (via Nokia Maps) to a contact for a meet-up, you can create groups for mass messaging, add in notes, reviews, phone numbers all with a few taps.

Back last year, Nokia introducing a messaging service was akin to when Samsung announced ChatOn—it’s kind of cool but there are alternatives out there.  Flash-forward today though and it’s a bit different—Nokia now means something and we’re much more inclined to jump on their ship as opposed to Samsung’s (then again, ChatOn is multi-platform, Pulse currently is not. However, Nokia Pulse is going to Android and iOS presumably after it is feature-complete on Windows Phone).

You can download Nokia’s Pulse here in the Marketplace. Being a beta, it is not yet restricted to Lumia phones. Let’s repeat that: currently ALL Windows Phones users can try this out but our bet is with v1.0 it will land in the Nokia Collection, so grab it and try it now. Also remember, you're looking for version 0.9 as the latest which may show up in 12-48 hours (we're still on the old v0.8).

Take a look at the video demo and announcement after the break along with the QR code...

Daniel Rubino
Daniel Rubino
Editor-in-chief

Daniel Rubino is the Editor-in-chief of Windows Central, head reviewer, podcast co-host, and analyst. He has been here covering Microsoft since 2007 when this site was called WMExperts (and later Windows Phone Central). His interests include Windows, Microsoft Surface, laptops, next-gen computing, and for some reason, watches. Before all this tech stuff, he worked on a Ph.D. in linguistics and ran the projectors at movie theaters, which has done absolutely nothing for his career.

10 Comments
  • Maybe,In a year it could be the What's app killer
  • Yep. Looks nice but will only work well if all my buddies is using this too.
  • Wouldnt this be only useful for Nokia phones which means Windows phones(beta all wp7 phones)?
     
    Whatsapp is cross platform, not sure if this will be the case for this app. 
     
    If that is the case, it wont be a whatsapp killer. 
     
    edit: nevermind
  • If you look on the pulse website it says android and ios support is coming in fall
  • Well, you can still use Nokia pulse right now on iOS through safari on iphone. 
    Not sure, if it has all features that way, but sure,  you can use basic stuff like what's app messaging. Except that it won't have push notifications yet.
  • Really? Just give me whatsapp that actually runs in the background and with push notifications. Sometimes i feel like using my old e72 just to have a decent whatsapp experience.This new thing won't work. FB is the social network, deal with it.
  • Cant update on my focus
  • I disagree with the article that this will be Lumia only at v1.0. If they are going to other platforms in the fall, then no need for a couple of months of exclusivity. Communication requires having other people to communicate with. I think thus could be a game changer if they do it right. I've wanted to get rid of my overpriced unlimited text, but not enough people are using WhatsApp or KiK to justify that move.
  •   Thanks for all the great feedback everyone!   Nokia Pulse is currently available for most clients of: WP, Symbian, MeeGo, and Web. This fall we will also introduce the Android and iOS clients as we clearly believe in the value of cross platform Pulse app.   Thanks again and keep the feedback coming! Liron Markus Product Manager Pulse  
  •  
    I think is a good product, but unfortunately(or thankfully) social networks are already here and to stay. They provide the core of it: the connection between people. Having an additional network(a private one if you like) sounds like cumbersome to me. Besides when it comes to "private" everyone automatically thinks of email or SMS (not of an app). Anyway let’s see how it goes