Even though most of its competitors have already rolled out video calling to their respective messaging apps, one of the largest and most ubiquitous mobile messaging services, WhatsApp, has remained conspicuous by its absence from that list. Rumors over the past several months have indicated that the company is all set to introduce video calling to its mobile apps on Android and iOS, but the feature has continued to elude WhatsApp much to the annoyance of its users. However, WhatsApp users may now have reasons to be upbeat about the possibility of getting the video calling option on their devices, as latest reports suggest that the Facebook-owned company is all set to rollout the feature fairly soon.
According to reports, video calling is coming to WhatsApp as part of the next update, although, only on iOS. There’s no word unfortunately on when the update will hit the Android version of the app. The report also indicates that the video calling feature will only be available on WhatsApp beta for now, so a huge majority of users will still not have access to it until the company decides that the feature is ready to hit primetime. Quite a few screenshots of the upcoming beta has already leaked out, which shows that the feature is indeed in the works and although Android users will be missing out on the fun for the time being, it should only be a matter of time before WhatsApp users on Android devices also get a taste of video calling via WhatsApp.
Competitors like Skype, ICQ, Google Hangout, Line, Viber, WeChat and many others already offer video calling, so it is fairly surprising that such a fundamental feature is still missing on WhatsApp after all these years. Having said that though, WhatsApp was also one of the last major messaging apps to have rolled out voice calling, long after the feature had already become standard on many of its aforementioned competitors. The one important thing to note, however is that Android was the first platform to receive voice calling on WhatsApp ahead of iOS but whether or not the same happens this time around, remains to be seen.
