Today, WhatsApp updated their Android app in the Play Store with a bunch of new features. Probably one of the most feature packed updates from WhatsApp in quite a while. First we’ll start with the Emojis. The update brings all sorts of new emojis as well as the ability to choose them based on skin tone. So now you can throw up the peace sign in 6 different colors. Pretty cool, and definitely something that many other messaging apps don’t have.
In this new update, you can also customize your chat notifications. Whether you want it to be a popup or not. Or whether it should pop up only when the screen is on or off. Pretty useful feature there. Customization has always been a big feature for Android users. You can also still mute the chat for 8 hours, 1 Week, or 1 Year. In this update, WhatsApp also says there is language support for Urdu and Bengali, according to their changelog. The company has also made it easier to lower data usage during WhatsApp Calls. Just head into Settings > Chats and Calls to set that up.
Noticeably missing is Google Drive support in this update. We’ve seen the ability to backup your chats to Google Drive in previous versions of WhatsApp, and have also seen it taken out in a few versions. The most logical explanation for this is that the company have not worked out all of the bugs just yet, and they are working to do so. Hopefully we’ll see Google Drive support added back in pretty soon.
WhatsApp is probably the most popular messaging app of all time. In fact, it’s the first non-Facebook or non-Google app to hit 1 billion installs on Google Play. Even though WhatsApp is technically owned by Facebook now, the company is letting WhatsApp continue to operate separately. Since the acquisition, we’ve seen a lot of new features added to WhatsApp, like the ability to handle texts on the web, and make calls through WhatsApp.
This update to WhatsApp is rolling out now. As usual it is a staged rollout, so you’ll need to be patient. For those interested, the version is 2.12.250.