Nokia Beta Labs has decided to shut down its support for the popular Nokia Conversation messaging app, with development now officially at an end. It's not the end for messaging on a Nokia smartphone, however - read on after the cut to find out more...

Nokia Conversation first saw the light of day as an experimental prototype for organising messages into contact-based streams back in November 2007. Its success in doing a simple job well made it an instant favourite, but with the app set to be included in the Ovi Suite and on the upcoming Nokia N8, it's clearly time to take the “beta” sticker off.

“Conversation was released at Nokia Beta Labs in November 2007 … and immediately proved to be popular and continued to get a steady amount of interest and feedback over time,” a post on the Nokia Beta Labs blog reads.

Read our Nokia Conversation review

“The team added support for more devices and then more after that, although the intention was more to pilot this kind of messaging experience rather than productise this as a stand-alone application.

“Given that development of the standalone app has virtually ended, though, we feel it's time to close the Conversation experimental beta trial. Keeping a trial and forum open without matching levels of development and feedback responsiveness would be doing a disservice to you.”

Although instant messaging will be making an appearance on the Nokia N8 later this year, for now, you can still download Conversation from Nokia Beta Labs here.