WhatsApp Movie Calling Feature Starts Rolling Out To Android Devices: What About iOS?
WhatsApp’s one billion monthly active users may eventually receive what they have been anticipating for the app to support: movie calls.
WhatsApp, one of the most popular messaging clients globally, was bought two years ago by Facebook mastermind Mark Zuckerberg for a jaw-dropping $Nineteen billion shellout. Since then, the app’s popularity surged, and with a ton of users using the site daily, even the slightest anomaly or switch is trussed to be spotted.
In the Android app, Android Police seems to have noticed very first that a fresh movie call feature has been leisurely popping up for some users. The availability seems to be appearing at random, as some users can access the feature even without updating, assuming they have the latest beta versions installed. For those who do have it, if the person you’re attempting to call doesn’t have the feature, it’ll end up just being a voice call. The movie call UI pops up, but tapping the "movie" button renders an error message.
To see if you have the feature, people’s contact cards in your list database should now come with options for voice calling and movie calling. No official word from the makers of WhatsApp has been issued yet, and there’s still no definite timeframe as to when all Android devices will receive the feature.
Engadget’s Steve Dent was able to attempt the fresh feature out, and he has remarked that both the movie and sound quality were "excellent" over a Wi-Fi connection, with the call taking place inbetween France and the UK.
After a movie call test run in May that ended up being pulled by WhatsApp, it seems the app is eventually ready to integrate movie calls this time. For healthy comparison, other popular talk apps already have this feature, such as Facebook’s Messenger app on mobile, and more recently, Google’s own app dedicated to movie calls, Duo.
Longtime WhatsApp users have howled for a movie calling feature in the app for a while now, which is just par for the course, given that other clients are already supporting it, let alone its parent company, Facebook, making the absence of movie calls on the app a little perplexing. When the movie calling feature leisurely shoves out a broad release, it remains to be seen how Messenger, Duo and other movie calling apps fare given WhatsApp’s colossal user base.
But what about iOS? Surely, WhatsApp hasn’t forgotten about its users who own iPhones. No word exactly on when the feature will hit iPhones, but it’s safe to assume that iOS ten is also slated to love WhatsApp movie calls soon. It seems like WhatsApp is prioritizing Android, for now at least.