Facebook Announces It Will Revamp Messenger Apps With New Design Phone Number Integration

In line with my report from earlier this month, Facebook has announced that it will be revamping its Android and iOS Messenger apps. As we previously noted, the new apps have an entirely new design that is flatter and distinct from the standard Facebook application on Android and iOS. The Verge was given a preview of the Android version has some new features besides the new design:

The highlight feature, however, of the new apps is phone number integration. The repot summarizes the functionality as a WhatsApp competitor:

The Android version is available as a test with a limited number of users beginning today and iOS in the near-future. Also incoming, we previously reported, are updates to the main Facebook app that integrate Graph Search, but Facebook has not confirmed this as of yet.