we submitted 2.4 with networking fix on saturday and are working with apple to get 2.4 approved as quick as possible. meanwhile we removed the app from the following countries which are having network problems: France, Singapore, Switzerland, and Austrlia.
as soon as 2.4 is approved, will re-enable those countries back in…
we apologize a million times for this and hope you will all be enjoying 2.4 shortly.
well, 2.3 is here and it is time to update everybody on what works and what doesn’t in the 2.3 release.
before we do that, we want to extend a huge THANK YOU to our users for coming to our rescue and helping us deal with the issue we mentioned in the previous blog post. we were overwhelmed by all of the support emails and tweets we got from you. that level of kindness and encouragement only made us want to deliver an even better release for our users. we put a lot of effort into 2.3 and hope it will have a favorable reception.
first, we want to talk about whats new in 2.3 and explain some features:
1. media transfer: any iPhone (2G, 3G, or 3GS) with any OS can send audio and pictures (either existing picture from your Camera Roll or by taking a picture). if you have an iPhone 3GS running iPhone OS 3.1 or higher, you can also send a video (either one from your Camera Roll or by recording one in real time). both parties need to be running version 2.3 in order to send and receive media messages.
by default, images and videos you receive will be saved to your iPhone Camera Roll. if you’d like, you can turn off automatic media saving by switching the “Save Incoming Media” button to Off (accessible in settings page).
2. message delivery receipts: in 2.3 you probably have noticed by now that you see a red letter attached to every message you send. those red letters are actually quite important because they tell you if your message was delivered properly or not. in a future version we will most likely replace these letters with graphics and have the software automatically re-try delivery if it fails, but for now you just get a visual indication of the state of your message. here is what each letter means:
3. there are a also a lot of minor improvements. for example: you can now disable message text preview (just like w/SMS) and you can also select a specific sound to play when push notifications arrive. we encourage you to explore the WhatsApp > Settings > Chat Settings screen and customize the application to your liking.
unfortunately, now would be a good time to mention what went wrong with the 2.3 release. in an attempt to optimize how our application connects to our service, it looks like people on the following mobile networks can no longer connect to WhatsApp over 3G/UMTS (while still able to connect via Wi-Fi):
the good news is that we have identified the problem and are already in the process of submitting version 2.4 which fixes the issue. we will also email Apple Review Team and ask them to expedite the review process since it is affecting many of our users. meanwhile, until 2.4 is available, you can continue to use WhatsApp 2.3 on Wi-Fi.
