Update: As of February 23, 2016, the new mobile version is the default. If you've tested the new version before this date, nothing will change for you (even if you've disabled the new version since, in which case it will continue to be disabled).
Remember 2010, when smartphones looked like this?
Back then, we created a mobile version of chat, so that people could use the bare minimum of features on those and similar phones.
Well waddayaknow, suddenly it's 2016, smartphones for some reason now look like this:
– and the "bare minimum" seems a little underwhelming.
So we made something (special credit goes to Paweł and Chris).
Above all else, the most important thing is that you can finally interact with arbitrary messages:
– you can reply, edit, get the permalink, star, etc. (assuming relevant permissions, of course). Just click1 a message to interact with it. If you can't, because the whole message consists of just a link (and you don't want to click the link, you want to select the message), then click somewhere around it and if necessary use the up/down arrows to move the selection to the correct message.
Only the rooms list and the live chat itself currently use this new version, and we consider this whole thing a beta.
Oh, and in this new version, you can submit new messages by just pressing Enter.
Give it a spin, and as always, post issues here on Meta.
If you want to stick with the old version, you'll find a checkbox on the "prefs" tab of your chat profile with which you can disable the new mobile version.2
1I know it's not really "clicking" on a phone, but you know what I mean.
2You can check or uncheck that box on your desktop computer – it only sets the preference that when you look at the chat on your phone, then you want or don't want to see the new version. If you're active on more than one of the three chat sites (chat.meta.se, chat.se, and chat.so), then you have to change the setting on each of them.
s/click/tap/g
– fredley Jan 27 '16 at 17:02