The rumours of voice calling feature in the Facebook owned Whatsapp have come true. One of the world’s most popular mobile messaging platforms first announced that it was working on the functionality early last year, and it was expected to make an official debut sometime this year, but some pictures have surfaced recently suggesting that the feature is being tested with a few limited users in some regions.
A Reddit user, pradnesh07 posted images this weekend that show a new WhatsApp voice calling interface running on an Android device. He was able to use the feature on his Nexus 5 running Android Lollipop. The screenshots suggest that there would be separate screens for dialing a voice call to WhatsApp contacts, call logs and ongoing calls. The screenshots are similar to leaked pictures of the interface that appeared online in December.
As per pradnesh07, the calling feature is included in WhatsApp’s new build (2.11.508) which is only available on WhatsApp’s website. So excited users will need to download the .apk file and side-load the app until it arrives on the Play Store.
However, even after installing the new version, the voice calling feature will not be activated for all users. Users will only be able to get the voice calling feature if someone who has it enabled calls them through WhatsApp similar to an invite system, as per pradnesh07.
With already a web client for the messaging app out fortnight ago, Whatsapp is aiming to lure users from messaging app like Viber, Line and WeChat who already have a calling feature in their app.