Meta launched a bunch of new features over the past few months to improve the overall experience, including avatars, communities, 32-person video calls, in-chat polls, and creating groups of up to 1024 users. To be more specific, Meta made a special effort this year to improve the calling experience in WhatsApp.
meta highlight 32-person video calling, the ability to message or mute participants, and call link as the three main features that make the calling experience on the chat platform better than ever. 32-Person Calling allows you to start a video or voice call with up to 32 people on your mobile device.
The ability to message or mute participants is also quite helpful, as it allows you to magnify the video or audio feed and mute or message them individually by long-pressing on a participant during the call. Instant Chat Messenger also added the ability to easily invite people to group calls by sharing a call link.
In addition, Meta made some “functional changes” to WhatsApp to improve the calling experience. New in-call banner notifications help you see when someone new joins a WhatsApp group call. At least the in-call video screen (read picture-in-picture) on the WhatsApp beta app for iOS makes it easier for users to multitask during calls. Finally, you can easily see who’s speaking if their camera is turned off, thanks to the colored waveforms.
On top of all that, Meta also features end-to-end encrypted messaging, meaning all your calls are safe and secure. Meta has said that it will continue to add more new features over the next year to bring high-quality, private calling to WhatsApp.
In the meantime, you can share your favorite WhatsApp feature for this year with us in the comments section.