For quite a few years now, WhatsApp has remained the most popular messaging app on smartphones. Starting off as just a text messaging app, WhatsApp soon became a multimedia messaging app, and if you have WhatsApp on your phone, chances are you don’t require many other apps.
Reports suggest that WhatsApp is here to launch another feature that not many apps in the market have already – group voice and video calling. The app already has the option of voice or video calling individual contacts, but now you will soon have an option of adding people to existing voice or video conversations.
Even though the group voice calling feature is more or less confirmed for WhatsApp’s next update that should be out by early next year (2018), the possibility of getting group video calls so fast is very low at the moment, but will be a surety in the near future.
Here’s a confirmation of the group voice calling feature:
WhatsApp is internally working to implement group voice calls! ?https://t.co/ODTJoig2qR
— WABetaInfo (@WABetaInfo) October 13, 2017
The idea is derived from already existing ‘conference calls’ that we have been using for years, although charged by our cellular providers. Even though this will be a free option, how beneficial will this feature really be? Will it be a boon? Or will it be a nuisance? I certainly hate being on a call with more than one person at once!
The Facebook-owned messaging app is bringing this feature to WhatsApp that already exists on Facebook Messenger. Yes, through Messenger, you can already place group voice calls, but we expect it to be much more popular when it comes to WhatsApp, as the clarity of calls tend to be better on the latter.
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This update of WhatsApp could certainly turn out to be a very annoying update, as the group calling button will be inside each group. Very often, quite a few members of a group may be free while most may be busy. However, we’re hoping WhatsApp doesn’t forget to add a ‘Mute Group Calling’ option as well.
Last week, WhatsApp also announced plans to add live location sharing in their next update:
While developers are constantly working on these updates, don’t expect them anytime within the next few months, as they have more pertinent features to be working on, such as the ‘Recall Feature‘ – we wrote about this update a few months back.
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