15 ms·

Whatsapp: Video Calling

156 points by bhaile 10y ago

Lx1oG-AWb6h_ZG0 10y ago
This is very good news, I'm really tired of how bad Skype's quality has gotten. WhatsApp's voice calls, on the other hand, are almost always crystal clear, often better than even phone calls.
- evacchi 10y ago
  It's interesting how my opinion is completely opposite. I feel like chat apps tend to get "featuritis" as soon as they become more popular.
  - grenoire 10y ago
    WhatsApp is probably one of the most barebones chat apps I've seen so far. It's providing exactly what I need for communicating with people, and nothing more. I doubt that adding video calls to a chat app requires a featuritis diagnosis.
  - zamalek 10y ago
    > featuritis Email likely won't be an eventuality in this case.
  - jhasse 10y ago
    Try Telegram :) It doesn't have voice or video chat and the clients are open-source. So you can remove these features if it ever becomes popular ;)
- LiquidFlux 10y ago
  Is the quality of a phone call a high bar? I've always found WhatsApp, Messenger and Skype to provide what sounds like much less compressed audio, occasionally at the cost of latency until the bitrate drops to compensate.
- telesilla 10y ago
  There is one main reason for Skype's terrible call quality these last years, and that is because it's no longer peer to peer as it was at it's beginning. All Skype calls go through Microsoft's servers, as far as I understand. I expect WhatsApp can make use of P2P (I suppose WebRTC) as I also find the phone calls excellent quality and have come to use it a lot. I'll definitely be ditching Skype very soon once video is proven.
  - volkanh 10y ago
    Most cellular networks run behind symmetric carrier grade NATs. Even when you have two mobile devices behind the same NAT their traffic will not flow P2P. All traffic has to be routed to the public net (and then back in if you can figure out IP:Port which is usually not possible with symmetric NATs). They will never be hair-pinned on the NAT either... True P2P is only possible when at least one mobile device is on a public network or behind a more permissive NAT device.
    - notoverthere 10y ago
      I think @telesilla's point is that a Skype call would be going through all the cellular network's infrastructure, and then off to Microsoft, before coming back. It's an extra link in the chain, meaning another potential bottleneck and added latency.
- crdb 10y ago
  It's the opposite for me. All WhatsApp calls - including to others in Singapore literally less than a mile from me - have a 3 second lag. This is not the case with Skype.
  - torrent-of-ions 10y ago
    Yep, WhatsApp is high latency and really latency is more important than quality for voice calling. Video calling I think is actually a bit more lenient because you can pick up more visual cues to more easily adjust for the lag.
  - yati 10y ago
    Same for me, where WhatsApp randomly tries to "reconnect" for audio only calls, Skype works flawlessly with video. Also, with Skype, I can make really cheap international calls to phones. I only wish they'd not abandoned the Linux client so badly.
  - unixhero 10y ago
    It's not the same for me. EUROPE TO US, EUROPE TO LATIN AMERICA, LATIN AMERICA - EUROPE ASIA TO EUROPE All without latency.
- ungzd 10y ago
  At least Skype works on desktop.
  - dandelion_lover 10y ago
    What about jitsi meet? https://meet.jit.si/ https://meet.jit.si/
    - GFischer 10y ago
      Unfortunately Jitsi was acquired by Atlassian, so I don't think you'll see many advances there. They were (are) some of the best at working with WebRTC. Edit: I would put more stock on Appear.in. They also have some of the best people, and they have recently launched a monetization plan (I was worried about that part)
  - deleted 10y ago
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- deleted 10y ago
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flyingramen 10y ago
I used video calling (almost) everyday for the past few years. I find FaceTime to be best at video calling even in the face of not the best connectivity. Unfortunately it is limited to Apple devices only. Excited to try WhatsApp for this.
- mathw 10y ago
  I know why FaceTime wasn't opened like they promised it would be, but I do think it's a big shame. It's 2016 - we should have pervasive standard video calling by now, surely?
  - lorenzhs 10y ago
    For those unfamiliar with the reasons for not making FaceTime an open standard: Apple was sued for patent infringement by VirnetX, a patent troll: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/08/report-after-patent-loss-apple-tweaks-facetime-and-logs-500000-complaints/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/08/report-after-pate... and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12212990 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12212990
    - dingaling 10y ago
      VirtNetX market cap Nov 2016: $185 million https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/VHC?p=VHC https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/VHC?p=VHC Fines due to VirNetX from Apple following iMessage / VPN On Demand / FaceTime patent case: $625 million Apple current liquidity: c . $180 billion I see a straightforward solution. Stock buy-out, reclaim fines, shut-down. Apple would actually save money plus own all the patents.
- Gustomaximus 10y ago
  Have you tried hangouts? I find that quite good.
fwn 10y ago
I'd love to know whether it is encrypted. They promoted their end to end encryption promise for messages, so I think they would've promoted it again if it still were true for the video call feature. edit: Google, for example, promised their video calls to be encrypted with Duo. https://blog.google/products/duo/meet-google-duo-simple-1-to-1-video/ https://blog.google/products/duo/meet-google-duo-simple-1-to...
- xfr 10y ago
  It is end to end encrypted.
- thewhitetulip 10y ago
  you really believe them?
  - deavmi 10y ago
    I don't. I really don't.
  - fwn 10y ago
    I do believe, as I wrote, that they promoted end to end encryption. This is also what is directly observable in their statements.
- jamix 10y ago
  They most probably use WebRTC for video and voice calling, and you can't have an unencrypted call in WebRTC.
  - fwn 10y ago
    Since you seem to know much more about that than me, forgive me asking a direct follow-up question: Is it, if it's WebRTC, only in-transit encryption or would that mean that the calls content isn't visible for WhatsApp/Facebook at all?
    - jamix 10y ago
gonvaled 10y ago
Google Duo is working very well for me, and it is really easy to use, which is a must when talking with older family members. Let's see how WhatsApp compares.
- dx034 10y ago
  I really like that Duo can switch between Wifi and mobile network without reconnecting. However, usability is imo much better with Whatsapp. Duo still doesn't support calls on home screen on iPhones (calls are shown as notifications) and often fails to connect if the other person hasn't used the app for a day. It's annoying to first ask via Whatsapp to open Duo and then call there.
  - gonvaled 10y ago
    Indeed, I have also noticed those issues with Android phones. That is something that must be improved on.
- TheArcane 10y ago
  You can't individually switch off video on duo.
- TheArcane 10y ago
  You can't individually switch off video on duo.
- riprowan 10y ago
  This is the first I've heard of this app. What is the point? Isn't this just hangouts all over again? I can't understand why these companies keep rolling and re-rolling the same apps over and over.
  - JBReefer 10y ago
    Too many engineers on payroll, or engineers held onto by managers that are good at building a kingdom in the wrong place.
Angostura 10y ago
Sorry, while it requires unrestricted access to all my contacts, I'm not using it.
- thirdsun 10y ago
  Of course it uses your Contacts. Would you prefer to add your contacts to WhatsApp individually and maintain a second set of mostly duplicated data?
  - Angostura 10y ago
    I would prefer to add the group of contacts I want to Whatsapp. I might want my social group there, I don't want my professional contacts on there. So yes I would prefer to have the option of adding contacts separately.
  - rglullis 10y ago
    It doesn't have to. We could use something like ENUM mapping [1] on the device and there would be one single set of data that the user is in control. Even better, it would mean that I can choose the granularity of access to different communication channels, so if someone has my phone number they wouldn't be able to know my other messaging handles unless I make it public. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_number_mapping https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_number_mapping
- relics443 10y ago
  Just because they have access to your contacts doesn't mean they store. Most likely all they do is check to see if they're on WhatsApp.
Aoyagi 10y ago
Meanwhile, Telegram doesn't even have voice calling...
- bjn 10y ago
  As far as I know, Durov first wants to create the best messaging platform and at this point I must say Telegram is really the best at what it does and constantly improving.
  - thewhitetulip 10y ago
    Yes and it is staying on being a messaging platform rather than doing everything and anything that others are doing. It has a webapp which works, desktop apps for desktops and works seamlessly
    - krrrh 10y ago
      But it doesn't do end to end encryption by default and has a confusing interface for it which combines ephemerality and encryption into 'secret' chats. Most of the people I know who use Telegram are engineers and almost all of them believe that the standard chats are encrypted and 'secret' only refers to ephemerality because Telegram marketed itself so strongly as a private messenger. It's of course possibly to deal with encryption and ephemerality as separate concerns but this doesn't seem to be a priority at all for the Telegram team. I feel like the team has the best intentions but it doesn't provide better security and privacy than Signal, Wire, or even Whatsapp when it comes to day-to-day chats with regular people in your life. As far as I recall there isn't even a way to verify key fingerprints.
      - thewhitetulip 10y ago
        >but it doesn't provide better security and privacy than Signal, Wire, or even Whatsapp on what basis is this statement made? Isn't whatsapp going to use your data for ads on FB? I have had people tell me that their whatsapp contacts are popping up on facebook as "people you may know". This isn't just the end of it. >believe that the standard chats are encrypted One just has to read their website, it is clear that only secret chats are end to end encrypted. This is the problem with people, not their team. Tesla faced the same problem with their auto pilot feature.
pmyjavec 10y ago
Great, another app that does the same thing as the other apps that do the same thing. Wouldn't it be nice if we could use an open, standard protocol and network so I don't need 5 apps installed to communicate with various circles of friends over different mediums.
- nothrabannosir 10y ago
  After the death of federated im on mobile, this is the closest we get to decentralisation. I'm all for it. The more people are on different platforms, the less any one platform knows about anyone. Ideally, federation. But bar that, this is better than having everything in one app. Bonus: this puts the pain in the front, where it should be. If there was ever a chance of getting back to an open protocol, this will be the best way to get there: make the proprietary universe annoying for users.
  - mahyarm 10y ago
    In todays app world although, it's easier to have 5 messaging apps unlike the desktop days. We all really only have one messaging app in the background, and that is apple / google push servers.
- mkagenius 10y ago
  > Great, another app that does the same thing as the other apps that do the same thing. Are you serious there? There were billion different apps doing text messaging too before Whatsapp. I don't see any point in dismissing the video chat on the basis that it is not the very first app.
- fmela 10y ago
  https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/
  - Qantourisc 10y ago
    Agreed, if we were using standard. But currently we are mostly NOT using standard.
sschueller 10y ago
Same day we have this article "Internet Freedom Wanes as Governments Target Messaging, Social Apps (npr.org)" in the front page of HN. I know Facebook claims to use Whisper systems encryption but how can we blindly trust that this is actually implemented in a closed source system? Stallman and others have been warning us for many years and we have been brushing it off. Now Snowden pretty much confirmed most of it but we keep going and entangling our wold more into these services.
- Nux 10y ago
  It's simple. People are oblivious or just don't give a shit. As long as they can share their cat pictures and so on, it's all fucking dandy. Something really bad needs to happen to move things in the right direction. Snowden was not enough, clearly.
  - onion2k 10y ago
    People are oblivious or just don't give a shit. As long as they can share their cat pictures and so on, it's all fucking dandy. We (people who work in tech) have a duty to fix these issues and to implement our products in ways that respect the privacy and security of the people who use what we build without passing the buck on to them. A Facebook user doesn't have to give a damn about encryption before Facebook put good encryption in place - the engineers at Facebook should just do it anyway, because it's the right thing to do. If we build services that fail the user by allowing a malicious actor to violate their privacy then that is our fault. It is not the user's fault for not demanding we do our jobs properly. This is on us.
    - joe563323 10y ago
      All the above comments are thoughtful.
    - rawfan 10y ago
      We don't want to fix these things in our products because we want all that information about our customers because it's an extra revenue stream. The maclicious actor is us. Don't work for shitty companies and implement stuff right for the companies you do work for. Edit: Product owners give you jobs that are bad for the user/customer but they want it done ayways. Convince them why it's a bad idea and find another job if you can't.
_ao789 10y ago
"Hello, can you hear me?" <- will this be the first 3minutes of every WhatsApp call now too? (hint: Skype)
- vinay427 10y ago
  My recent experiences with Skype on relatively good internet connections between continents has been great. Meanwhile, I've fairly regularly had freezing and terrible latency issues with Hangouts calls between two parties on excellent connections in the same state.
dx034 10y ago
Does anyone know when we can actually use it? They say "over the next days", does that mean we'll have to wait for an update or is the functionality already there and will be unlocked?
- flawedluck 10y ago
  If you're eager to use it, it is available in the Beta version of the Whatsapp (atleast for Android)
thewhitetulip 10y ago
I remember reading a long time ago that Whatsapp will not include things like calling/video calling and will focus solely on texting. Why is every messaging app doing the exact same thing and why is there no inter-connectivity between them?
- thomasahle 10y ago
  This. And now that Facebook owns WhatsApp, they could at least integrate those two?
  - thewhitetulip 10y ago
    Yes, why have both messenger and whatsapp. Additionally it seems they want to kill whatsapp, messenger gets the cool features that whatsapp should have gotten like the bot platform. Whatsapp is like an illegitimate child. Apparently everyone is on whatsapp, the bot platform should have been on whatsapp
    - flawedluck 10y ago
      They can collect a lot more user data from Messenger due to its facebook integration. So obviously, they're going to keep developing Messenger
  - gressquel 10y ago
    Given theres already furore due to recent data merging (fb + whatsapp), I dont think it would be a wise decision to integrate them further. People started using WhatsApp before it was acquired by FB inc. A fair share of these might just leave WhatsApp if were to be merged completely with FB messenger. There are plenty of alterantives out there.
    - thomasahle 10y ago
      They don't have to merge them. Just let them speak to each other.
planetjones 10y ago
FaceTime seems to be the only service which delivers consistently good quality. Skype's video quality was abysmal the last time I used it and the Google app (Duo I think) was the worst ever - infact that one showed the recipient the video flipped vertically. I didn't bother to see if it would be resolved, but instead just uninstalled it. I don't use Whatsapp's audio calls, so I doubt I will use video.
- pritambarhate 10y ago
  I tried it a couple of times. Video quality was not great. The second time I tried Duo it had weird sound issues. Was completely disappointed. Didn't use it after that. It's a surprise since it comes from Google. Hangouts has worked more or less OK for me.
Maarten88 10y ago
I don't understand the priorities of WhatsApp. I don't need video calling. I need support for bots. WhatsApp doesn't have it. Meanwhile, Skype, Telegram, Facebook Messenger and Google are where the action is, building great bot support. I want to use WhatsApp, but am using Skype and Telegram now to build a bot. Bot support could also make WhatsApp viable as a business in the long run as an independent, secure service. Simply make businesses pay for bot accounts.
- Al-Khwarizmi 10y ago
  And I need true multi-device support (not a crappy desktop client that needs your phone to be near you, connected to the Internet and using the battery). And a way of adding contacts without exchanging phone numbers. WhatsApp has always been the worst among the major messengers (Hangouts, Telegram, Line, WeChat all have this) but the sad thing is they can do what they want. They have the network effect on their side, the masses use it, so they can get away with being light-years away from the others in features...
  - thirdsun 10y ago
    And the masses use it particularly because all you need is a phone number. My mother or many of her peers barely manage to finish any kind of registration process, yet they have no problem using WhatsApp. Here in Germany there's no escaping WhatsApp - it's the standard communication platform.
  - hocuspocus 10y ago
    I'd also enjoy true multi-device support, but I've been using Hangouts for a long, long time (when it was still Google Talk, and before the Android video/voice capabilities), and it's never been very good at IM, where Whatsapp is very reliable on the contrary.
- mtgx 10y ago
  I have no need for bots whatsoever, but I wanted video calls (in Signal, too). Whatsapp also seems to know how to do it right with low-data usage. Different strokes for different folks, I guess.
deavmi 10y ago
XMPP for the win guys.
deavmi 10y ago
Or Matrix.
throw2016 10y ago
HN is not the best place to have these discussions about privacy because most of the folks here are neck deep building a surveillance economy. If your job depends on not understanding something you wont so it's easy to brush away surveillance issues just like those whose livelihood is impacted by global warming find it easy to brush away those issues. There is the old trope about I don't care or have nothing to hide which is self servingly obtuse because surveillance is not about you the individual, its about the health of your society. And the tired cliche about people not caring, well if people get impacted and begin to draw the dots they will care very much. So this just rests on a fleeting ignorance of the scope of surveillance. Whisper systems uses your phone number which directly ties to your identity when any privacy conscious service that is half sincere will do everything in its power to avoid such gratuitous tie-ins.
nickik 10y ago
Is this end to end encrypted as well?
LyalinDotCom 10y ago
I think its time someone created yet another messaging/video app. We just don't have enough ways to communicate.
herman5 10y ago
Since they're one of Twilio's largest customers, I wonder if they're accomplishing Video calling with the new Twilio Video product [1] that's currently in beta [1] https://www.twilio.com/video https://www.twilio.com/video
arao 10y ago
"Welcome aboard." says WeChat..
pmontra 10y ago
Nice to have but I almost never used a video chat any phone app, only a few times on Skype, mostly on desktop. Anyway, probably many people are using this so it's a must have for WhatsApp not to fade away. But please add bots, unless FB decided that their Messenger is the only platform to survive in the long run and WhatsApp has to die. WhatsApp is still the number one chat in most of Europe and every developer here would like to write bots for it instead of for Messenger and Telegram. It's where our customers and our customers' customers are. Messenger is going to take over if bots get mainstream and you don't support them. My bet is that it will happen next year or never so you're running out of time (or not at all). We'll see. And if you do implement bot, please copy Messenger: exactly the same API and the same or a very similar UI. That will give you all the Messenger bots from day 1 and developers will love you.
- secfirstmd 10y ago
  What's the story with encryption of WhatsApp video calls? Can it still be protected via Signal Protocol?
padiyar83 10y ago
Love it!
padiyar83 10y ago
Love it!
tscs37 10y ago
No. Audio Calls on Whatsapp are already bad, not only is there no way to turn them off, the quality just sucks compared to the local mobile network. I guess same goes to the Video Calls... and honestly, who does video calls from their phone?
- j_s 10y ago
  who does video calls from their phone A lot of people, specifically FaceTime users. I would probably be safe in saying the vast majority of smartphone users, especially iPhone. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/04/01/6-facts-about-americans-and-their-smartphones/ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/04/01/6-facts-abou...
  - tscs37 10y ago
    I guess that question is answered then.

156 points by bhaile 10y ago

This is very good news, I'm really tired of how bad Skype's quality has gotten. WhatsApp's voice calls, on the other hand, are almost always crystal clear, often better than even phone calls.

evacchi 10y ago
It's interesting how my opinion is completely opposite. I feel like chat apps tend to get "featuritis" as soon as they become more popular.
- grenoire 10y ago
  WhatsApp is probably one of the most barebones chat apps I've seen so far. It's providing exactly what I need for communicating with people, and nothing more. I doubt that adding video calls to a chat app requires a featuritis diagnosis.
- zamalek 10y ago
  > featuritis Email likely won't be an eventuality in this case.
- jhasse 10y ago
  Try Telegram :) It doesn't have voice or video chat and the clients are open-source. So you can remove these features if it ever becomes popular ;)
LiquidFlux 10y ago
Is the quality of a phone call a high bar? I've always found WhatsApp, Messenger and Skype to provide what sounds like much less compressed audio, occasionally at the cost of latency until the bitrate drops to compensate.
telesilla 10y ago
There is one main reason for Skype's terrible call quality these last years, and that is because it's no longer peer to peer as it was at it's beginning. All Skype calls go through Microsoft's servers, as far as I understand. I expect WhatsApp can make use of P2P (I suppose WebRTC) as I also find the phone calls excellent quality and have come to use it a lot. I'll definitely be ditching Skype very soon once video is proven.
- volkanh 10y ago
  Most cellular networks run behind symmetric carrier grade NATs. Even when you have two mobile devices behind the same NAT their traffic will not flow P2P. All traffic has to be routed to the public net (and then back in if you can figure out IP:Port which is usually not possible with symmetric NATs). They will never be hair-pinned on the NAT either... True P2P is only possible when at least one mobile device is on a public network or behind a more permissive NAT device.
  - notoverthere 10y ago
    I think @telesilla's point is that a Skype call would be going through all the cellular network's infrastructure, and then off to Microsoft, before coming back. It's an extra link in the chain, meaning another potential bottleneck and added latency.
crdb 10y ago
It's the opposite for me. All WhatsApp calls - including to others in Singapore literally less than a mile from me - have a 3 second lag. This is not the case with Skype.
- torrent-of-ions 10y ago
  Yep, WhatsApp is high latency and really latency is more important than quality for voice calling. Video calling I think is actually a bit more lenient because you can pick up more visual cues to more easily adjust for the lag.
- yati 10y ago
  Same for me, where WhatsApp randomly tries to "reconnect" for audio only calls, Skype works flawlessly with video. Also, with Skype, I can make really cheap international calls to phones. I only wish they'd not abandoned the Linux client so badly.
- unixhero 10y ago
  It's not the same for me. EUROPE TO US, EUROPE TO LATIN AMERICA, LATIN AMERICA - EUROPE ASIA TO EUROPE All without latency.
ungzd 10y ago
At least Skype works on desktop.
- dandelion_lover 10y ago
  What about jitsi meet? https://meet.jit.si/ https://meet.jit.si/
  - GFischer 10y ago
    Unfortunately Jitsi was acquired by Atlassian, so I don't think you'll see many advances there. They were (are) some of the best at working with WebRTC. Edit: I would put more stock on Appear.in. They also have some of the best people, and they have recently launched a monetization plan (I was worried about that part)
- deleted 10y ago
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deleted 10y ago
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flyingramen 10y ago

I used video calling (almost) everyday for the past few years. I find FaceTime to be best at video calling even in the face of not the best connectivity. Unfortunately it is limited to Apple devices only. Excited to try WhatsApp for this.

mathw 10y ago
I know why FaceTime wasn't opened like they promised it would be, but I do think it's a big shame. It's 2016 - we should have pervasive standard video calling by now, surely?
- lorenzhs 10y ago
  For those unfamiliar with the reasons for not making FaceTime an open standard: Apple was sued for patent infringement by VirnetX, a patent troll: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/08/report-after-patent-loss-apple-tweaks-facetime-and-logs-500000-complaints/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/08/report-after-pate... and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12212990 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12212990
  - dingaling 10y ago
    VirtNetX market cap Nov 2016: $185 million https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/VHC?p=VHC https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/VHC?p=VHC Fines due to VirNetX from Apple following iMessage / VPN On Demand / FaceTime patent case: $625 million Apple current liquidity: c . $180 billion I see a straightforward solution. Stock buy-out, reclaim fines, shut-down. Apple would actually save money plus own all the patents.
Gustomaximus 10y ago
Have you tried hangouts? I find that quite good.

fwn 10y ago

I'd love to know whether it is encrypted. They promoted their end to end encryption promise for messages, so I think they would've promoted it again if it still were true for the video call feature. edit: Google, for example, promised their video calls to be encrypted with Duo. https://blog.google/products/duo/meet-google-duo-simple-1-to-1-video/ https://blog.google/products/duo/meet-google-duo-simple-1-to...

xfr 10y ago
It is end to end encrypted.
thewhitetulip 10y ago
you really believe them?
- deavmi 10y ago
  I don't. I really don't.
- fwn 10y ago
  I do believe, as I wrote, that they promoted end to end encryption. This is also what is directly observable in their statements.
jamix 10y ago
They most probably use WebRTC for video and voice calling, and you can't have an unencrypted call in WebRTC.
- fwn 10y ago
  Since you seem to know much more about that than me, forgive me asking a direct follow-up question: Is it, if it's WebRTC, only in-transit encryption or would that mean that the calls content isn't visible for WhatsApp/Facebook at all?
  - jamix 10y ago

gonvaled 10y ago

Google Duo is working very well for me, and it is really easy to use, which is a must when talking with older family members. Let's see how WhatsApp compares.

dx034 10y ago
I really like that Duo can switch between Wifi and mobile network without reconnecting. However, usability is imo much better with Whatsapp. Duo still doesn't support calls on home screen on iPhones (calls are shown as notifications) and often fails to connect if the other person hasn't used the app for a day. It's annoying to first ask via Whatsapp to open Duo and then call there.
- gonvaled 10y ago
  Indeed, I have also noticed those issues with Android phones. That is something that must be improved on.
TheArcane 10y ago
You can't individually switch off video on duo.
TheArcane 10y ago
You can't individually switch off video on duo.
riprowan 10y ago
This is the first I've heard of this app. What is the point? Isn't this just hangouts all over again? I can't understand why these companies keep rolling and re-rolling the same apps over and over.
- JBReefer 10y ago
  Too many engineers on payroll, or engineers held onto by managers that are good at building a kingdom in the wrong place.

Angostura 10y ago

Sorry, while it requires unrestricted access to all my contacts, I'm not using it.

thirdsun 10y ago
Of course it uses your Contacts. Would you prefer to add your contacts to WhatsApp individually and maintain a second set of mostly duplicated data?
- Angostura 10y ago
  I would prefer to add the group of contacts I want to Whatsapp. I might want my social group there, I don't want my professional contacts on there. So yes I would prefer to have the option of adding contacts separately.
- rglullis 10y ago
  It doesn't have to. We could use something like ENUM mapping [1] on the device and there would be one single set of data that the user is in control. Even better, it would mean that I can choose the granularity of access to different communication channels, so if someone has my phone number they wouldn't be able to know my other messaging handles unless I make it public. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_number_mapping https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_number_mapping
relics443 10y ago
Just because they have access to your contacts doesn't mean they store. Most likely all they do is check to see if they're on WhatsApp.

Aoyagi 10y ago

Meanwhile, Telegram doesn't even have voice calling...

bjn 10y ago
As far as I know, Durov first wants to create the best messaging platform and at this point I must say Telegram is really the best at what it does and constantly improving.
- thewhitetulip 10y ago
  Yes and it is staying on being a messaging platform rather than doing everything and anything that others are doing. It has a webapp which works, desktop apps for desktops and works seamlessly
  - krrrh 10y ago
    But it doesn't do end to end encryption by default and has a confusing interface for it which combines ephemerality and encryption into 'secret' chats. Most of the people I know who use Telegram are engineers and almost all of them believe that the standard chats are encrypted and 'secret' only refers to ephemerality because Telegram marketed itself so strongly as a private messenger. It's of course possibly to deal with encryption and ephemerality as separate concerns but this doesn't seem to be a priority at all for the Telegram team. I feel like the team has the best intentions but it doesn't provide better security and privacy than Signal, Wire, or even Whatsapp when it comes to day-to-day chats with regular people in your life. As far as I recall there isn't even a way to verify key fingerprints.
    - thewhitetulip 10y ago
      >but it doesn't provide better security and privacy than Signal, Wire, or even Whatsapp on what basis is this statement made? Isn't whatsapp going to use your data for ads on FB? I have had people tell me that their whatsapp contacts are popping up on facebook as "people you may know". This isn't just the end of it. >believe that the standard chats are encrypted One just has to read their website, it is clear that only secret chats are end to end encrypted. This is the problem with people, not their team. Tesla faced the same problem with their auto pilot feature.

pmyjavec 10y ago

Great, another app that does the same thing as the other apps that do the same thing. Wouldn't it be nice if we could use an open, standard protocol and network so I don't need 5 apps installed to communicate with various circles of friends over different mediums.

nothrabannosir 10y ago
After the death of federated im on mobile, this is the closest we get to decentralisation. I'm all for it. The more people are on different platforms, the less any one platform knows about anyone. Ideally, federation. But bar that, this is better than having everything in one app. Bonus: this puts the pain in the front, where it should be. If there was ever a chance of getting back to an open protocol, this will be the best way to get there: make the proprietary universe annoying for users.
- mahyarm 10y ago
  In todays app world although, it's easier to have 5 messaging apps unlike the desktop days. We all really only have one messaging app in the background, and that is apple / google push servers.
mkagenius 10y ago
> Great, another app that does the same thing as the other apps that do the same thing. Are you serious there? There were billion different apps doing text messaging too before Whatsapp. I don't see any point in dismissing the video chat on the basis that it is not the very first app.
fmela 10y ago
https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/
- Qantourisc 10y ago
  Agreed, if we were using standard. But currently we are mostly NOT using standard.

sschueller 10y ago

Same day we have this article "Internet Freedom Wanes as Governments Target Messaging, Social Apps (npr.org)" in the front page of HN. I know Facebook claims to use Whisper systems encryption but how can we blindly trust that this is actually implemented in a closed source system? Stallman and others have been warning us for many years and we have been brushing it off. Now Snowden pretty much confirmed most of it but we keep going and entangling our wold more into these services.

Nux 10y ago
It's simple. People are oblivious or just don't give a shit. As long as they can share their cat pictures and so on, it's all fucking dandy. Something really bad needs to happen to move things in the right direction. Snowden was not enough, clearly.
- onion2k 10y ago
  People are oblivious or just don't give a shit. As long as they can share their cat pictures and so on, it's all fucking dandy. We (people who work in tech) have a duty to fix these issues and to implement our products in ways that respect the privacy and security of the people who use what we build without passing the buck on to them. A Facebook user doesn't have to give a damn about encryption before Facebook put good encryption in place - the engineers at Facebook should just do it anyway, because it's the right thing to do. If we build services that fail the user by allowing a malicious actor to violate their privacy then that is our fault. It is not the user's fault for not demanding we do our jobs properly. This is on us.
  - joe563323 10y ago
    All the above comments are thoughtful.
  - rawfan 10y ago
    We don't want to fix these things in our products because we want all that information about our customers because it's an extra revenue stream. The maclicious actor is us. Don't work for shitty companies and implement stuff right for the companies you do work for. Edit: Product owners give you jobs that are bad for the user/customer but they want it done ayways. Convince them why it's a bad idea and find another job if you can't.

_ao789 10y ago

"Hello, can you hear me?" <- will this be the first 3minutes of every WhatsApp call now too? (hint: Skype)

vinay427 10y ago
My recent experiences with Skype on relatively good internet connections between continents has been great. Meanwhile, I've fairly regularly had freezing and terrible latency issues with Hangouts calls between two parties on excellent connections in the same state.

dx034 10y ago

Does anyone know when we can actually use it? They say "over the next days", does that mean we'll have to wait for an update or is the functionality already there and will be unlocked?

flawedluck 10y ago
If you're eager to use it, it is available in the Beta version of the Whatsapp (atleast for Android)

thewhitetulip 10y ago

I remember reading a long time ago that Whatsapp will not include things like calling/video calling and will focus solely on texting. Why is every messaging app doing the exact same thing and why is there no inter-connectivity between them?

thomasahle 10y ago
This. And now that Facebook owns WhatsApp, they could at least integrate those two?
- thewhitetulip 10y ago
  Yes, why have both messenger and whatsapp. Additionally it seems they want to kill whatsapp, messenger gets the cool features that whatsapp should have gotten like the bot platform. Whatsapp is like an illegitimate child. Apparently everyone is on whatsapp, the bot platform should have been on whatsapp
  - flawedluck 10y ago
    They can collect a lot more user data from Messenger due to its facebook integration. So obviously, they're going to keep developing Messenger
- gressquel 10y ago
  Given theres already furore due to recent data merging (fb + whatsapp), I dont think it would be a wise decision to integrate them further. People started using WhatsApp before it was acquired by FB inc. A fair share of these might just leave WhatsApp if were to be merged completely with FB messenger. There are plenty of alterantives out there.
  - thomasahle 10y ago
    They don't have to merge them. Just let them speak to each other.

planetjones 10y ago

FaceTime seems to be the only service which delivers consistently good quality. Skype's video quality was abysmal the last time I used it and the Google app (Duo I think) was the worst ever - infact that one showed the recipient the video flipped vertically. I didn't bother to see if it would be resolved, but instead just uninstalled it. I don't use Whatsapp's audio calls, so I doubt I will use video.

pritambarhate 10y ago
I tried it a couple of times. Video quality was not great. The second time I tried Duo it had weird sound issues. Was completely disappointed. Didn't use it after that. It's a surprise since it comes from Google. Hangouts has worked more or less OK for me.

Maarten88 10y ago

I don't understand the priorities of WhatsApp. I don't need video calling. I need support for bots. WhatsApp doesn't have it. Meanwhile, Skype, Telegram, Facebook Messenger and Google are where the action is, building great bot support. I want to use WhatsApp, but am using Skype and Telegram now to build a bot. Bot support could also make WhatsApp viable as a business in the long run as an independent, secure service. Simply make businesses pay for bot accounts.

Al-Khwarizmi 10y ago
And I need true multi-device support (not a crappy desktop client that needs your phone to be near you, connected to the Internet and using the battery). And a way of adding contacts without exchanging phone numbers. WhatsApp has always been the worst among the major messengers (Hangouts, Telegram, Line, WeChat all have this) but the sad thing is they can do what they want. They have the network effect on their side, the masses use it, so they can get away with being light-years away from the others in features...
- thirdsun 10y ago
  And the masses use it particularly because all you need is a phone number. My mother or many of her peers barely manage to finish any kind of registration process, yet they have no problem using WhatsApp. Here in Germany there's no escaping WhatsApp - it's the standard communication platform.
- hocuspocus 10y ago
  I'd also enjoy true multi-device support, but I've been using Hangouts for a long, long time (when it was still Google Talk, and before the Android video/voice capabilities), and it's never been very good at IM, where Whatsapp is very reliable on the contrary.
mtgx 10y ago
I have no need for bots whatsoever, but I wanted video calls (in Signal, too). Whatsapp also seems to know how to do it right with low-data usage. Different strokes for different folks, I guess.

deavmi 10y ago

XMPP for the win guys.

deavmi 10y ago

Or Matrix.

throw2016 10y ago

HN is not the best place to have these discussions about privacy because most of the folks here are neck deep building a surveillance economy. If your job depends on not understanding something you wont so it's easy to brush away surveillance issues just like those whose livelihood is impacted by global warming find it easy to brush away those issues. There is the old trope about I don't care or have nothing to hide which is self servingly obtuse because surveillance is not about you the individual, its about the health of your society. And the tired cliche about people not caring, well if people get impacted and begin to draw the dots they will care very much. So this just rests on a fleeting ignorance of the scope of surveillance. Whisper systems uses your phone number which directly ties to your identity when any privacy conscious service that is half sincere will do everything in its power to avoid such gratuitous tie-ins.

nickik 10y ago

Is this end to end encrypted as well?

LyalinDotCom 10y ago

I think its time someone created yet another messaging/video app. We just don't have enough ways to communicate.

herman5 10y ago

Since they're one of Twilio's largest customers, I wonder if they're accomplishing Video calling with the new Twilio Video product [1] that's currently in beta [1] https://www.twilio.com/video https://www.twilio.com/video

arao 10y ago

"Welcome aboard." says WeChat..

pmontra 10y ago

Nice to have but I almost never used a video chat any phone app, only a few times on Skype, mostly on desktop. Anyway, probably many people are using this so it's a must have for WhatsApp not to fade away. But please add bots, unless FB decided that their Messenger is the only platform to survive in the long run and WhatsApp has to die. WhatsApp is still the number one chat in most of Europe and every developer here would like to write bots for it instead of for Messenger and Telegram. It's where our customers and our customers' customers are. Messenger is going to take over if bots get mainstream and you don't support them. My bet is that it will happen next year or never so you're running out of time (or not at all). We'll see. And if you do implement bot, please copy Messenger: exactly the same API and the same or a very similar UI. That will give you all the Messenger bots from day 1 and developers will love you.

secfirstmd 10y ago
What's the story with encryption of WhatsApp video calls? Can it still be protected via Signal Protocol?

padiyar83 10y ago

Love it!

padiyar83 10y ago

Love it!

tscs37 10y ago

No. Audio Calls on Whatsapp are already bad, not only is there no way to turn them off, the quality just sucks compared to the local mobile network. I guess same goes to the Video Calls... and honestly, who does video calls from their phone?

j_s 10y ago
who does video calls from their phone A lot of people, specifically FaceTime users. I would probably be safe in saying the vast majority of smartphone users, especially iPhone. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/04/01/6-facts-about-americans-and-their-smartphones/ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/04/01/6-facts-abou...
- tscs37 10y ago
  I guess that question is answered then.