WhatsApp opens up video calling to everyone

[hawker]

Link

WhatsApp is rolling out video calling today to its billion-plus monthly users. That’s basically the entire story — if you’d like to use it, update the app, open a chat, and tap the familiar video camera icon in the top-right corner. The video chat results look like the video chatting you’ve done before on FaceTime, Skype, Facebook Messenger, or Google Duo: two faces, one in a smaller window, with a handful of small features for changing the position of the chat windows or turning the camera around.

That video calls took until November 2016 to arrive on WhatsApp reflects the app’s cautious — some might say glacial — approach to product development. WhatsApp launched in 2009, but group chats didn’t come until two years later, and voice calls didn’t come until four years after that.

 

[Jola]

The quality of their voice calls is not always great, maybe they should fix that first.

For example, Skype voice quality is usually much better.

 

[hawker]

The quality of their voice calls is not always great, maybe they should fix that first.

For example, Skype voice quality is usually much better.

I call Germany quite a bit using WhatsApp for voice (we are both on Wi-fi) it's usually decent quality. Skype is only video calling for me and thats often a bit hit or miss.

Interested to test this out with WhatsApp.

 

[Jola]

I call Germany quite a bit using WhatsApp for voice (we are both on Wi-fi) it's usually decent quality. Skype is only video calling for me and thats often a bit hit or miss.

I have noticed that WA calls to foreign parties often work better than local calls. For the life of me I don't know why that should be.

 

[hawker]

I have noticed that WA calls to foreign parties often work better than local calls. For the life of me I don't know why that should be.

Noticed the same..

 

[D1lb3rt]

I noticed that if both parties in the WA call are on WiFi then the quality is not bad. As soon as one switches to 3G it goes for a ball of ****

 

[hawker]

I noticed that if both parties in the WA call are on WiFi then the quality is not bad. As soon as one switches to 3G it goes for a ball of ****

Maybe whatsapp tries to compress the data to reduce data usage and this makes the quality super bad?