Nokia released their new Nokia Messaging for Social Networks beta 2 (also known as Nokia Communities)  today, allowing support for Twitter and bringing additional features for Facebook than the previous version. Nokia announced even more communities for the final version, but it looks like the Facebook integration has been finalized as no features seem to have been forgotten, except maybe a chat implementation and a better navigation. The major change brought by this new version is the integration of a new Twitter client that lets you use a single application for the two most famous micro blogging services. We will review each network separately, as they are presented very differently in Nokia Messaging for Social Networks.

The application is still a beta version and only available for S60 v5 devices (basically all Nokia S60 touchscreen phones). Of course, more platforms will come later on, but Nokia wanted to develop a preview version for S60 v5 devices only and make a global one for the final release. This software being designed for S60 v5 systems, it supports homescreen widgets and can therefore show your Facebook and Twitter timelines, as well as requests, replies and messages at a glance.

Facebook

The main purpose of this application is to provide you with a good Facebook client directly on your Nokia phone. Therefore, this application offers a complete timeline (like the new Facebook widget) showing photos, wall posts, applications updates and anything else you would expect to see on the desktop version. Keeping in mind their application is designed for social purposes, Nokia included a big icon on the upper part of the screen allowing you to update your status. Not only this allows you to let people know what you are doing or what you are thinking, it also lets you share your location with everyone so that other people could meet you on your way to an event. For instance, you may update your status saying "Hagop is going to the theater to see the latest James Bond" and associate your location with the update. This new release also lets you comment and like statuses without having to open any other application or window. The screen to do so also offers a view showing who else liked and commented on the particular update or status.

Like the N97 widget, the Facebook integration in Nokia Messaging For Social Networks has a dedicated icon to upload multimedia files such as photos and videos. However, unlike the official widget, this one lets you update videos and can handle several images at the same time, whereas the widget can only upload one file at a time. You also have the possibility to select between uploading a photo previously taken or to take a new one and immediately post it on Facebook. You can therefore select up to 6 photos and upload them immediately to your "Mobile Uploads" folder. However, you can't select what album to upload them to, unlike the Facebook widget for N97. Regarding the image quality, the pictures uploaded through Nokia Messaging For Social Networks don't seem to be sent in their original quality, but they look fine when seen on a computer. Their quality is better than when uploaded using the N97 widget, even though some improvements have been made with its latest version.

Among the other features brought by this new version is the integration with people's phone numbers: You can now directly call or send someone a text message from their profile, if they have filled their contact information properly, which is extremely convenient if you don't have them in your phonebook. Another nice functionality is the possibility to import your contacts' birthdays within the phone's calendar. This definitely makes your life easier, especially knowing that, for some reason, the N97 or the 5800 don't put your contacts' birthday into your calendar.

To finish, Nokia Communities offers the possibility to manage your friend requests and events directly within the application, just like the official N97 widget does, and to read your messages. Although the N97 widget also has this feature, it doesn't allow you to delete messages when Nokia Communities does.

In conclusion, this new Facebook application has many features and is very detail oriented. However, since the N97 Facebook widget has been updated recently, many features are also offered by the widget and very few are specific to Nokia Messaging. Also, the interface isn't very good looking and the photos integration is not convenient; it is even sometimes difficult to find your way to access your friend's photos. However, the fact that you have to use a single application to manage your Twitter and Facebook accounts and use a single homescreen widget (see below), is a good reason to use this application instead of the official widget.

Twitter

The other new feature that came with Nokia Messaging For Social Networks beta 2 is the integration of a Twitter client. However, the application being a beta, its integration is far from being finalized. Indeed, the application shows an excellent timeline view with photos and links, lets you click on them and allows you to reply to a tweet. You of course have the possibility to tweet directly from the application, by using the link located at the top of the screen but also to favorite tweets by selecting them. Nevertheless, that's pretty much all what it can do for now, as all of the other options redirect you to a "Coming Soon" page.

Nonetheless, the features shown are very interesting. Indeed, there are some links to basic Twitter features, such as direct messages, followers, mentions and trends; but there are also other ones that may be transformed in excellent features in a few months. For instance, we have noticed a photo icon that redirects to a "Coming Soon" screen (screenshot above) that could mean Nokia is planning to integrate Twitpic into the application. However, many interesting options seem to be missing from the interface, such as a search tool or a retweeting option.

Therefore, the Twitter application is far away from being finished, but it seems to have some good features to bring. The homescreen widget and the available options may traduce that Nokia wants to make this application as good as Gravity, even though it only supports a single Twitter account for the moment. However, the login screen shows that several accounts could be handled by the application, so we might have some good news soon! Moreover, Nokia Messaging for Social Networks will supports other communities in a few months, which might be an RSS reader to fully compete with Gravity and its Google Reader integration or even a MySpace integration.

Finally, here are some screenshots showing the homescreen widget. You can see that it supports both Facebook and Twitter updates and allows you to scroll up or down. It can also show you your requests and messages as well as upcoming events. What is very convenient with this widget is that you simply use one and save space on your homescreen, as it handles both Twitter and Facebook updates, letting you check your friend's updates at a glance. It also shows a small icon next to the photo to let you know through which service the update was published.

To let you see the difference between the official Facebook widget for N97 and this one, we have left them both on the screen next to each other. You can see that even though the new one looks better than the widget, its readability is poor because of the transparent background. Moreover, when the Facebook widget is able to show 3 updates in a single box, the Nokia Messaging widget can only handle one at a time.

To conclude, although this application will bring new features soon, its Twitter integration is very poor when other services offer a lot more for free. Some Facebook features were also missing and navigation was not intuitive at all. Another annoying this is the fact that this application is still and beta and therefore is extremely unstable. Indeed, it is very painful to use and crashed many times when we tried it. We even had to restart our phone to launch it again as it wasn't starting at some point.

Nevertheless, we believe Nokia could make Nokia Messaging for Social Networks an excellent application, especially by improving stability and the Twitter client. What they could also do is to re-use the Facebook widget's interface for this application, to make navigation simple and fast. Let's wait a little bit to see what Nokia will come up with in a few months, but we expect something really good with Twitter.

The applications works on the Nokia N97, N97 Mini, 5800 Xpress Music, 5530 Xpress Music and 5230. It can be downloaded directly from here. Please do not forget to provide Nokia with your feedback.