Whatsapp Video Calling and 5 new features Whatsapp has that made us fall in love with the app all over again!

Which one of these Whatsapp 2016 features is your favourite?

Whatsapp finally announced their Video Calling feature, a feature that has been much awaited and discussed. Whatsapp released a Beta version of their Video Calling feature some time back and people have already been accessing the feature and using it. The feature is initially restricted to Android and Windows phones and will slowly roll out globally. Whatsapp will begin streaming the new update with the feature tonight globally. However, not all regions will receive it all at once and there might be some regions that receive the update late. There’s no news of when the update will roll out to India but over the next week, the update should be out globally. For now, the upgrade is only for the higher Android versions meaning if you are using an older Android version, you might have to forgo the update.

1. Video Calling feature: Coming to the new features of Video calling and how it works, Once you update the app and get the new feature, simply open the app. Go to the video camera option on the top right corner. Connect the call to whom you want to chat with. In terms of look and design, there’s nothing different in Whatsapp video calling. Once the call is connected, you can see both the persons on screen – yourself in a smaller window and the other person in the main window, Additionally, you can adjust the position of the small screen where you can see yourself and adjust the size to make it larger or smaller. The version for now looks extremely basic and Whatsapp has kept it so in order to ensure that in multiple markets across the world where network is poor and there is still not LTE connectivity face no issues in making video calls.

But this is not the first new feature Whatsapp launched this year. 2016 has been quite a productive year for Whatsapp in terms of new launches and feature tweaks. Since Whatsapp’s acquisition by Facebook, the social netowkring giant has been bringing about a lot of changes. While most of these changes are competition features launched by apps like Snapchat which are seriously eating away into Whatsapp’s supremacy in the market and gaining a lot more traction among the youngsters, there are some that have been much demanded by users neglected by Whatsapp all these days. Howveer, with the addition of these features, Whatsapp has turned from a basic chatting app to a more advanced fun app.

2. New Camera Features: Whatsapp became more and more like Snapchat with the launch of their newer camera features. They announced the features recently and along with photo editing, they also launched newer emoticons and looks for images. However, for people using Whatsapp, the features are available only if you use the Whatsapp camera and not the smartphone camera to click images. Images that are shared directly through the gallery cannot be edited. It is not only the images that can be edited with emoticons, users can even add text to the images. The colours of the text and the emoticons can also be changed. It is quite a cool new feature and it did highlight Facebook’s aggressive war against Snapchat.

3. Facebook Integration: What people feared since the day Whatsapp was acquitred by Facebook finally came true this year. Just a few months back, Whatsapp altered their security features by which your number and Whatsapp data were automatically available to Facebook. This created a whole lot of furore as the changes were viewed as an invasion of privacy by all and sundry. Though the option was given to turn off the feature initially, it was announced by Facebook that slowly, the data would automatically get assimilated. Users complained and different security agencies across countries stepped in. For now, Whatsapp  announced that they will not be sharing their data with Facebook and the feature has now been turned off.

4. Whatsapp Front Flash: Whatsapp, just like most smartphones in modern times which cater to the selfie craze came with a new feature to keep the selfie enthusiasts happy.The app, along with the camera editing features also introduced a selfie flash. No, it definitely does not add a magic flash to the front camera, but rather, it comes in the form of a screen flash. When you take a selfie using the Whatsapp camera, you can turn on the flash feature. The entire screen will go blank and at the highest brightness level giving you a flash even for low-light photos and help you take better images. This is another way through which Whatsapp is changing the focus towards the youth and is launching more “fun” features to keep the crowd hooked to the app.

5. End to end encryption: Whatsapp finally announced end-to-end encryption. This means that the minute a text is sent, it cannot be read by anyone but the sender and the user. This took Whatsapp privacy and security to a whole new level. The Whatsapp messages stay private. Even Whatsapp servers cannot access them. So far, there were a lot of claims that Whatsapp is unsafe and can be hacked. But now, Whatsapp is completelyt secure and there can be no question of outsiders accessing Whatsapp conversation.

6. Free Whatsapp: This was one of the first changes Whatsapp rolled out right in the beginning of the year. While Whatsapp for iOS was never free and users had to pay a nominal fee of $1 to access the app post which it could be used for life, for Android users, the subscription rates kicked in a year after use. The fees stayed the same. However, this year, the fees were finally waived off and Whatsapp was finally made free for everyone. There are no subscription or download charges anymore for Whatsapp and the app is free in all regions.