Telegram is a great chat client. It is what we use in-house here at Ausdroid. Telegram’s battle is that it is relatively late to the party. WhatsApp is everywhere and offers so much. Telegram on the other hand is a simple, easy to use chat client but now they have added a very nice function, voice calls.
Telegram have been testing out their new Voice Call function and interface for several months now and they finally have the quality, speed and security of them where they are happy. As such they are rolling out the Voice Call function to Western Europe today with the rest of the world soon to follow.
The calls use the same end-to-end encryption as Telegram’s Secret Chat. The process of key verification has been improved with a simple comparing of four random emoji with the recipient. The Telegram network will use an AI to monitor your connection (network speed, ping times, packet loss percentage, etc.) and determine the best bit rate for the call. If you are worried about your data allowance there is an option to “Use Less Data” which decreases data usage by 25-30%.
There are no extra buttons in the interface, instead the “Call” function is in the overflow menu at the top of each chat. Once the call function is available here a phone icon will appear on every profile page.
But wait there’s more
The new v3.18 update also brings the ability to not just preview videos before they are shared but the ability to select the quality of the video. This compression rate that you select is remembered as the default level and will use it for all future video uploads until you change it yourself.
Some nice updates to Telegram that is for sure. I am still not sold on phone calls seeing as we always have phone reception, although it could be handy for when my phone is in recovery and I am trying to recover it from a soft brick.
Do you use Telegram? Will you use this functionality? What is your messaging app of choice and why?
Telegram is a great app – you can register your mobile no once and then uninstall the app from your phone, install it on your pc/mac and you’re still connected to the groups you were added to. There’s no need to use the mobile app ever again.
I don’t know of any other chat app that does this.
Pretty sure Viber works the same. However, it doesn’t have the built-in encryption Telegram and Signal have.
viber doesn’t require you to scan QR codes to sync the viber on your mobile device with viber on other devices?
I got so much crappy spam nonsense (eg buy these stickers) I gave up on Viber.