The relentless march of Whatsapp across the mobile world continues, and rightly so. The development team behind this excellent cross-platform instant messaging and file sharing application have left no stone unturned in keeping updates going. Even on Symbian, unusually for 2012, which is great news for us all. The latest version on my phone was 2.6 and I know there had been several sub versions since. And now we have v2.8.4, bringing support for profile pictures, download cancellation and a search bar in chats.

The changelog for this latest version 2.8.4 is:

• Option to set profile picture.
• Group member names in the group(top).
• Search bar in ‘chat’ tab (list of chat).
• Group icon big preview while changing pic.
• You can now cancel upload/download by pressing little ‘x’ beside upload/download bar.

...but I'd emphasise that there have been improvements all the way along the line, with ever increasing integration into Symbian, right down to system notifications and alerts.

In a world where Blackberry's stranglehold over the IM market has long since been broken and where Apple's iMessage system is necessarily limited to Apple devices, Whatsapp is both a breath of fresh air in the industry and an application that we can all get behind.

You can download the latest version by going to whatsapp.com on any Symbian phone, however old - Whatsapp's backwards compatibility is very impressive! Interestingly, the application isn't in the Nokia Store as I write this - perhaps it's mid-update.