There will be no VoIP calls on WhatsApp until next year. We have been talking about it all this year, that the VoIP calls for the application had not just arrived, neither with Facebook nor without Facebook. But now we do know for sure, thanks to the confirmation from the WhatsApp CEO, that there will be no VoIP calls until 2015.
Specifically, it has been Jan Koum, who is now at the Facebook board of directors, and who at the time founded WhatsApp, who has confirmed that the VoIP calling function for the application is now expected to land in the first quarter of next 2015. And this adds to the fact that this role should have landed in the second quarter of this year. In fact, there was talk that it would arrive before summer, and now that we are already in autumn, the first official news about this function arrives.
Noise cancellation and 2G issues
Apparently, the reasons why they would not have been able to launch this new function yet are two main. On the one hand, it seems that they are not managing to find a way to access the microphones of all the phones in a way that they can make use of noise cancellation. The problem will come mainly when it comes to achieving a uniform way to manage noise cancellation, and that can be applied to all smartphones.
On the other hand, the priority is to get the calling function to work well even when the coverage is not good, and we only have access to EDGE 2G networks. We already talked about 4G, but the truth is that even in our case it happens many times that we run out of coverage, or that we only have access to 2G coverage. In addition, there are many users who come in countries where the coverage is not even 3G, and that is why it is very important that the application has a VoIP call system that works even in 2G networks.
A margin of three months
The worst of all is that the company still does not give a specific date. Now they talk about the launch in the first quarter of next 2015, and that means that it could even arrive in March. All this without mentioning that the fact that they talk about three months is a clear sign that they do not know when the new function will be ready, and we could even see how they tell us again that the launch is postponed. Be that as it may, at least this time it is official information, and we will know that until 2015 we will not be able to use WhatsApp to talk on the phone.
