14 DAY TRIAL // Apple rolled out iOS 9.3.1 update to correct the link issue causing apps to crash on iPhones running version 9.3, but it appears that, in its turn, this new release is leading to some other problems.
iOS devices updated to 9.3.1 can no longer send and receive videos on WhatsApp, the popular instant messaging app that’s running on millions of phones out there. The issue only appears to be experienced when sharing videos between iPhones, so if you’re trying to send a video from your iPhone to another, the chances are that the receiver won’t be able to download it.
The error message that shows up when tapping the video received in a conversation reads, “Couldn’t download video. Try turning off Wi-Fi or VPN, or connecting to a different Wi-Fi network.”
Turning off Wi-Fi or switching to either 3G or 4G makes absolutely no difference, and the same error is experienced. A VPN connection wasn’t active when getting this error, and connecting to a different Wi-Fi network doesn’t correct the problem either.
Video sharing working fine with Android
We’ve tested video sharing between iPhone and Android devices, and file transfers and downloading seem to be working just fine, so it’s very clear that this is only a problem impacting Apple’s models.
This isn’t the only hitch that iOS users have experienced with WhatsApp since the arrival of iOS 9.3. There were reports that some users were unable to share photos on WhatsApp, no matter the number of files and no matter the connection. When choosing contacts to share photos, the app failed to start the transfer process completely.
An update that WhatsApp released earlier this week corrected this photo sharing problem, and the company is now expected to release another patch that would correct the bug impacting videos too. It’s hard to estimate how widespread the issue actually is, but one thing is clear: until more information arrives, you’d better push back the update to 9.3.1 for a little longer.
Update 1: We've also tried to determine whether this is an issue affecting iOS 9.3.1 exclusively or not, and it turns out it is because sending video files to any older version of iOS, even 7.1.2, works correctly.
Update 2: On the sender's iPhone, videos are listed as "received" and "read," so there might be a problem with downloading the files on the receiving device. We're still investigating and got in touch with WhatsApp to see if this is a known issue.
Update 3: We can now confirm that the same issue seems to be experienced on iOS 9.3 too, but once again, only between iPhones. We are still waiting for an answer from Whatsapp.
Update 4: Some of our readers confirmed that the video sharing bug also exists on iPhone 4 running iOS 7.1.2, so, in the end, this might not be a problem exclusively experienced on iOS 9.3.1 and newer iPhones. We're still investigating and we'll update when more info is available.
Update 5: Everything seems to be working fine now on iOS 9.3.1 on devices that have previous experienced the video sharing issue. There were no updates to WhatsApp whatsoever, so it was most likely just a server-side bug.