Nokia Betalabs has just released a new beta app called “Nokia Mobile Communities“, which is designed to provide a complete communities experience to the aforesaid users on the mobile phone without a dependency on the web or PC.

Nokia Mobile Communities provides a unique way to connect with people by creating private and public communities. Private communities, called Conversations, help you connect with friends, families and coworkers. Public communities, called Streams, allow you to follow people and topics that matter to you.

It provides a communities experience entirely on your mobile phone without any dependency on the PC or Internet.  As long as your phone supports SMS you are ready to go! To experience it, download the Java client from this site. If your device is not yet supported or if you are on a non-Nokia person you can still experience the service using the plain SMS interface.

During the beta trial, this service is only available to users in India and English is the only language supported at this time. While the app will work on all Nokia devices that support Java, we’ve optimized the application for S40 phones with 240×320 screen resolution.  Keeping the Indian context in mind, presently SMS is the bearer of communication for the service to reduce cost to the user.  A simple-SMS interface is also supported, especially for non-Nokia devices.

Features

The product has two main flavors – Conversations and Streams.

With Conversations you can communicate simultaneously with up to ten people by sending a single message, similar to instant messaging.  This feature is ideal for short conversations with friends, family, and co-workers (like coordinating a weekend plan or checking how their day is going).

With Streams, you can broadcast messages to your subscribed followers and, likewise, view messages from all people you subscribe to.  This feature is intended to create channels for community building and following a topic (e.g. career tips, hyper-local news) or a person (e.g. fan group for a Bollywood star).

Some of the other features are:

• Does not require a user account; the service uses your mobile number to identify you
• No fee for usage, costs only standard SMS rate (even when sending to multiple people)
• UX designed to simplify the messaging experience
• Plain SMS interface for users that don’t have the client or use a non-Nokia phone
• Integrated with your phone’s address book
• Allows users to share their current location (only in certain locations in beta)

Compatibility

This beta app is currently available for Symbian S40 & S60 non touch devices. Check the device compatibility here.

Download the app at Nokia Betalabs Page.

And Please do provide your feedback to Nokia Betalabs in the forums!

[Via Betalabs Blog]