With group voice calls and video calls becoming a new norm for families, friends and businesses, Facebook-owned messaging app WhatsApp is all set to integrate voice and video calls which may impact the growth of Skype, Google Hangout, Cisco Spark and other video calling service providers. According to multiple reports, a code related to group voice and video calls have been found on the new Beta version of the app on iPhone. The new WhatsApp v2.17.70 beta for the iPhone update has a code which refers to the group voice calling feature, reported a US-based online portal.
WhatsApp has not officially said anything about the speculation but WABetaInfo is known for having a bird's eye view on WhatsApp updates and usually announces them before the formal launch. According to reports, while there are many references in the code which suggest that the voice calling for groups is almost a confirmed. The Facebook-owned messaging app has been adding a lot of feature for its over one billion users. However, it lacked group voice and video calling feature despite massive demand.
WhatsApp group voice and video calls
“The 2.17.70 iOS update has very hidden references to group calls! Before it was an internal news, now it's all confirmed,” said report. Notably, the company has not provided any announcement on the new features and there is no clarity as to when they will be live for all. The report added that there are a lot of hidden references about group voice calls, but there is only one reference to group video calls. So group video calls are partially confirmed at the moment. Facebook already has a similar feature on Messenger. According to earlier reports, even WhatsApp was working on a group voice calls and could release the feature next year.
For group voice calling, WhatsApp 2.17.70 sends a request to the server to ask if the user you are calling is in another group call, said a report. It clearly indicates that users could be added one by one, either by the group administrator or a user. “Note that these references we found are very strong (but they aren't visible for you at present) and they have allowed us to understand what WhatsApp is going to add in the application, as we did for WhatsApp for iPad,” said WABetaInfo.
WABetaInfo is known for having a bird's eye view on WhatsApp updates and usually announces them before the formal launch. It had reported that WhatsApp is testing an ‘Unsend and Delete for everyone' feature. It has also reported that the iPhone app will soon give group administrators more power, with the ability to remove a greater number of participants from a group at once. The Beta app for Android also suggests that the administrators will get more new features for ‘groups', such as the ability to select whether users can modify details in the group.
