Windows Live Messenger & Mobile Beta

Microsoft is currently working on Windows Live Messenger Mobile client for Windows Mobile devices and while everything was under Beta testing, Microsoft has allowed the current Beta users to publish more information and screenshots.

What's the Windows Live Messenger Mobile all about? Well, basically it's the mobile device counterpart of Microsoft's new Windows Live Messenger for PCs which will replace the current Windows XP Messenger as well as the MSN Messenger clients to unify the messaging experience under one umbrella - Windows Live. The current version, which is available to a closed user group only, is an early Beta build and therefore far away from how it will works in the final version and since it is such an early Beta, it is still buggy.

But still, it provides a good preview as to how Microsoft will continue with its Windows Live Messenger strategy and it includes some features which Windows Mobile MSN Messenger user waited for ages:

Windows Live Messenger Mobile
- Emoticons aka smiles in chats
- Transfer files from and to your mobile device, including recording a voice clip
- using your device microphone and send pictures with your device camera
- Click on a contact to check out their contact card Live Contacts details and Live blog

Windows Live Client
- Open Windows Live Messenger
- Reading RSS Feeds
- Local Live Search
- Accessing your E-Mails from one single interface

The installation for now, can only be done on the device main memory which I guess most of us won't have much left. There's no option to select the storage card as an installation option yet. After the installation, you get two new icons in the Start menu, Windows Live Messenger and Windows Live Mobile.

Windows Live Mobile is a complete new way to handle future Windows Live services and allows you at the moment to perform several tasks like:
- Opening Windows Live Messenger
- Read news and own news sources (coming from RSS feeds)
- Doing Windows Live Local Search
- Viewing Windows Live Messenger contacts which synchronize with Outlook
- Reading/opening all E-Mails, SMS and MMS from one unified interface:

The Windows Live Messenger mobile provides a similar user interface as the client but with added feature not found in the previous version of Mobile Messenger:
- Similar client contacts overview
- Either grouped by Online/Offline status or grouped Groups
- Smiley chat icon
- Sending images and files

Windows Live Mobile Beta is not available to public yet but you may download here & register for the Windows Live Mobile Beta Here. Registering for the Beta doesn't means you will be added to the Beta tester group but it's the only official way to get it at the moment.

Microsoft hasn't given any planned release dates yet but stay tune as we might be able to get our hands on it within this year.