We already have the official confirmation of the functions that will come soon to the popular WhatsApp messaging application. Throughout these last months we have been getting to know many of the new features that are currently being worked on, to integrate them sooner or later, into the messaging service itself.
Today, the messaging service itself confirms the arrival of animated stickers, or animated stickers, as they are called in Spanish. They claim that they are launching new animated sticker packs, defining them as more fun and expressive.
Without going any further, yesterday they officially released the first package for users who have the most recent beta versions, although not all users of beta versions have access to this feature, which will be implemented gradually.
In addition, there is also the possibility of adding contacts through the scanning of their respective QR codes, a possibility that already exists in other messaging platforms, such as Threema, Twinme, or SafeSwiss, or even in xmpp / jabber messaging applications such as Antox or Conversations, among others, avoiding the need to add them manually. In this video we explain the process:
On the other hand, in their statement they point out that the dark mode will be extended to WhatsApp Web and the desktop application, which will allow users to maintain their conversations on desktop computers in a visually comfortable way when the lighting of the environment in which they are be scarce.
WhatsApp, like other services, has taken advantage of the confinement situation due to the pandemic to reinforce the group video calling function, although despite this, it continues to lag far behind other options, limiting its participation to a maximum of 8 people, when even Hangouts allows a maximum of 10 for its free version, and Duo continues to expand the number of maximum participants allowed.
As a quick comparison, those forgotten by the general public Viber and Line offer group video calls of up to 20 and 200 maximum participants, respectively, where in the case of Viber, group video calls arrived almost in the middle of last May, while Line has been offering them since the end of 2016, having introduced improvements over time.
For its part, WhatsApp uses Messenger Rooms for group video calls where it wants to have more participants, strengthening the rest of the Facebook application ecosystem.
But the video calling function natively integrated in the application will allow, among its novelties, to put one of the participants in the video calls in the foreground simply by keeping pressure on their own image. In addition, a video icon will also reach group chats of eight participants or less to facilitate the creation of group video calls.
And finally, ephemeral states come to the version of WhatsApp for KaiOS, a Linux-based mobile operating system.
WhatsApp points out that these news will be arriving during the next few weeks through the most recent versions of the application, although the safest thing is that the service does not take too long to offer them, so that users can take advantage of them as soon as possible now that they are already available. we are in the middle of summer.
Image Credit: WhatsApp
