WhatsApp is slowly turning into a decent Zoom or Google Meet competitor.
Meta’s social app just rolled out a number of improvements to its Calling functionality, including upping the limit for video call participants to 32 people. This is on all devices; previously, 32 people could only join a video call on mobile, while Windows users were limited to 16 people, and macOS users were limited to just eight people.
Zoom is still ahead as it allows 100 participants in video calls for Basic and Pro accounts (this does go up to 300 for Business and 500 for Enterprise accounts). Google Meet has similar limits, allowing for 100 participants for Standard/Essentials Starter/Essentials accounts, 150 participants for Business Standard/Enterprise Essentials accounts, and 250 participants for Teaching and Learning Upgrade accounts (admit it, you didn’t know Google has this many different account types). Finally, Apple’s Facetime allows up to 32 people on video calls. With this upgrade WhatsApp has finally become a decent alternative for video calls for smaller groups.
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Other new features in WhatsApp include screen sharing accompanied with audio (good for presentations), as well as a feature called Speaker spotlight, which makes it easier to see who’s currently speaking on a call.
WhatsApp also said it’s “relentlessly focused on audio and video quality,” and highlighted the recent launch of its MLow audio codec which should improve call reliability and quality, no matter how good (or bad) your connection is.
