Kakao recently announced the release of a significant update of KakaoTalk on its Android platform. Moving onto v4.0, KakaoTalk has gone through a fresh makeover with revamped user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) designs, and even a new brand image (BI). The update reaffirms Kakao’s service philosophy of developing and evolving continuously with users at the core, by staying true to user feedback and focusing mainly on improving user convenience.
“We focused on enhancing usability, discover-ability of option menus and convenience through the subtle, but impactful changes. We hope this update will help users discover all our features in a quicker and more convenient manner,” said Tim Jang, Kakao Philippines Director. “We will continue to develop our service to be in the forefront of the evolving smartphone user environment and design trends.”
The 4.0 upgrade continues this trend, with a stronger focus on UI/UX redesign. KakaoTalk has added a sophisticated touch to its design while maintaining all of its core features, and the user environment has been upgraded to allow greater accessibility to features that were previously less exposed. In addition, the new design places extra emphasis on the brand identity of KakaoTalk.
Further changes include support for animated emoticons to be displayed on a clear background. In the past, animated emoticons were only available in chat bubbles with a white background, and static stickers on a clear background.
The discovery of function menus was enhanced, by bringing out menus that were previously accessed through the Android hard key buttons to the screen area. In the chat rooms, ‘notification,’ ‘invite,’ ‘leave’ and ‘setting’ options that were previously accessed through the hard key menu were replicated to a soft key menu on the upper right hand of the screen. In the ‘chats’ tab, a floating icon has been added so that users don’t have to scroll to the end of the chatroom list to create a new chat room. In the ‘find’ tab, various methods for finding friends, such as ‘ID Search,’ ‘QR code,’ ‘Shake’ and ‘Invite’ are now exposed on the top of the screen to ease the process of finding a friend.
Other changes include a predominantly yellow design and new layouts for VoiceTalk, wherein participating members are now more visible and clearly displayed.
The upgrade also reflects Kakao’s efforts to provide users of different OS with a more uniform experience. By shifting the menus that were previously only exposed through the hardware keys on Android devices to the screen level, like it is in iOS versions, iOS and Android users can enjoy a more unified user experience. Another example is the emoticons button. With the latest upgrade, the button has been relocated from the left of the text box to within the text input box. This move will also help facilitate users’ hand movement between text and emoticons.
KakaoTalk v4.0 is now available on Google Play while its iOS counterpart (currently v.3.6.9) will be upgraded within the year.
Meanwhile, KakaoTalk users subscribed to Globe are no longer bound to a Wi-Fi connection to get onto KakaoTalk. With the help of the KakaoTalk20 data plan, users can avail of total access to all KakaoTalk services, including unlimited text messages, free voice calls, photo sharing and more by simply texting KakaoTalk20 to 8888 or dial *143# on your phone.