The feature to directly compete with voice calling in Facebook Messenger

Mar 19, 2014 17:26 GMT  ·  By

One of the features that the popular WhatsApp messaging service will include in their mobile app in the not too distant future is voice calling, which has been already confirmed to arrive on devices sometime later this year.

The company has unveiled before plans to make voice calling available for its users starting the second quarter of the year, but has not provide further details on what it will be all about.

However, allegedly leaked screenshots that have emerged over at iPhoneItalia appear meant to provide some more info on the matter by showing the calling screen that will be included in the application.

The screenshots were taken on an iOS device, and there’s no telling whether the app will look the same on Android devices as well, though we expect the functionality to be similar. WhatsApp for Windows Phone is expected to pack such capabilities as well.

The voice calling option in WhatsApp might prove to be easily accessible to all users, straight from the notification bar, as BGR India notes, and should be accompanied by a variety of in-call features, including the possibility to switch to other applications.

The leaked screenshots also offer a glimpse at the buttons available on the calling screen, which include the option to send a text or to mute the call, and another for turning the call to the phone’s speaker. Of course, there is also an end-call option available there.

The voice calling feature will work on both Wi-Fi and 3G networks, it seems, the same as Skype’s does. In fact, a closer look at the leaked screenshots unveils that the icons on the calling screen of the two applications appear very similar to each other.

Of course, chances are that they will look different when the feature rolls out publicly, and that they will differ from one mobile OS to another, although WhatsApp has yet to offer any specifics on this.

One other thing that remains to be seen is how well the voice calling capabilities of WhatsApp will bode for the functionality that Facebook has been rolling out to its messenger over the past several months.

Earlier this week, the same functionality was spotted in Facebook Messenger for Android in India, but it should not be too long before it arrives in other countries as well.

Undoubtedly, Facebook is not interested in growing WhatsApp as a rival for its own service, which suggests that it might actually try to merge the two into a single product at some time in the future.

For the time being, however, we’ll have to wait and see how voice calling in both of them will evolve, especially since Facebook is pushing it very slowly to various markets out there, and WhatsApp has yet to start delivering it to users.

Free VoIP calling has started picking up Steam on mobile devices lately, and the wide range of apps and services that offer it (such as Nimbuzz, LINE, Skype, BBM, Facebook Messenger and others) proves that, so we’re still have to see how well WhatsApp will do when compared to these rivals.

Considering the impressive number of people that are already taking advantage of WhatsApp Messenger, things should turn out pretty well for the service, one can say.