Great news for WhatsApp users. According to @WABetainfo Twitter account, the popular instant messaging app may add two new features on both its Android and Windows Phone versions: Change Number and Live Location.
If @WABetainfo is correct as usual, the new Change Number option has already been added to the new 2.17.130 Beta version of WhatsApp for Windows Phone and Windows 10 Mobile users and it seems obvious that this new feature will soon be available also for Android devices. Why is this feature so important? Because it will make it much, much easier to change your mobile phone number, and without losing your previous chats or group data.
The feature also allows you to notify all, none or just any of your WhatsApp contacts about your number change. Furthermore, according to @WABetainfo, the Change Number feature will be disabled by default.
So far, that’s what WhatsApp has told its users on its website: “When you change your WhatsApp phone number, your contacts will not individually be informed of the change. Only participants that share group chats with you will see that you changed your number. For a seamless messaging experience, notify your contacts that your number will be changing before you begin this process.” So, needless to say, the addition of the Change Number feature is a huge improvement, and we expect that it will make the Facebook-owned instant messaging app even more popular.
Always according to @WABetainfo, it appears that the Live Location sharing feature has already been added to the latest 2.17.150 WhatsApp beta version for Android devices, and that it is disabled by default. How does this new feature work? Unfortunately, so far we are not able to give you more details about it, but it probably will be similar to the sharing your location feature just added to Google Maps.