Facebook-owned WhatsApp has come with it biggest feature of this year. Back in May at F8 conference the company said it will roll out group calling feature in coming months, and started testing the feature soon after. The company has announced that it has started rolling out the group calls for voice and video for everyone that is Android and iOS users starting today.
Whatsapp group calling feature allows connecting up to four people on one call. The group calling supports both voice and video calling by updating the app via Google Play and App Store respectively.
Here is how to use the WhatsApp group call:
Firstly the users need to start a one-on-one voice or video call and then tap a new “add participant” button in the top right corner to add more people to the ongoing call.
Search for or select another contact you want to add to the call. When you receive a group voice/video call, the incoming WhatsApp voice or video call screen will show the participants currently on the call, and the first contact listed will be the participant that added you.
Meanwhile, in a voice call, you won’t be able to switch the call to a video call and vice-versa.
WhatsApp assured that group calls are end-to-end encrypted, similar to the messages. It added that it has designed calling to work reliably around the world in different network conditions.
Whatsapp has huge active users (about 1.5 billion) and the company says that users spend more than 2 billion minutes on WhatsApp calls per day. This means that there is a big group of people waiting to try out the feature. Since it has started rolling out for Android and iOS from today, it should be available for everyone over the next few days.
