The folks behind WhatsApp Messenger continue to deliver updates for the beta version of the Windows Phone application. The same goes for the other platforms as well, but it looks like some of the most important changes are added to the Windows Phone version because the application is not yet on par with Android and iOS apps yet.

The bad news is that these features the developer continues to add to WhatsApp Messenger beta haven’t been implemented into the stable version. In fact, the latter hasn’t been updated for quite a while and the main issues affect the Windows Phone version of WhatsApp to the point of making it unusable for some.

First of all, WhatsApp for Windows Phone will deplete your phone’s battery much faster even if you don’t actually use it. The issue manifests on Windows Phone 8.1 handsets, but there are some reports confirming the problem from users with earlier versions of the operating system.

But this is just one of the few major problems WhatsApp has on Windows Phone. Things like not being notified in case of a new message or receiving messages hours after they were actually sent, are among the worst that could happen to users.

This was one of the reasons the application was pulled from Windows Phone Store earlier this year and developers only published it again after more than a week.

From what we can tell, WhatsApp engineers continue to work on fixing some of the issues the Windows Phone version of the app has been plagued by since forever.

One of the things that is still an issue for Windows Phone users is the high battery consumption of the application, which we hope WhatsApp will fix sooner rather than later.

Beta users will be able to crop images and use them as backgrounds

The good news is that the beta version of WhatsApp has just received an important update said to add full Windows Phone 8.1 support, as well as lots of improvements and bug fixes.

NokiaPowerUser reports that one of the changes included in this update should be lower battery consumption of WhatsApp for Windows Phone. Some tweaking has been done as well and those who have been accepted into the beta program will notice there are new settings at the bottom of the chat.

Also, there’s a new option that should allow WhatsApp users to crop images that can then be set as backgrounds. It’s unclear when exactly the next update for the Windows Phone version of WhatsApp will arrive in Windows Phone Store, but rumor has it that we won’t have to wait too long.