Popular instant messaging service Telegram is celebrating its seventh anniversary today with some great news for its users. As of today, Telegram will allow users to make video calls with its app, which is a long-awaited feature for those who use the messaging service.
According to an official blog post, the team behind Telegram decided to implement video calling this year mainly because more people are now using “face-to-face communication” to talk to friends or work from home during the pandemic.
The company notes that the video calling feature is still considered an alpha version, but it can already be used by anyone with the latest version of Telegram installed.
2020 marked the need for face-to-face communication, and our alpha version of video calls is now available on both Android and iOS. You can start a video call from your contact’s profile page, and turn video on or off at any time during voice calls. Like all other video content on Telegram, video calling supports picture-in-picture mode, allowing you to chat through conversations and multitasking while maintaining eye contact.
There is not much you need to know before using Telegram video calling, as the feature works similarly to FaceTime as another video calling app. Once you open the latest version of the Telegram app, you can simply tap on the user profile and then select the video calling option. According to Telegram, video calls are all protected with end-to-end encryption.
All video calls are protected with end-to-end encryption. To confirm your connection, compare the four emojis displayed on the screen for you and your chat partner – if they match, your call is 100% secured by time-tested encryption, also used in Telegram’s Secret Chats and Voice Calls.
While the video call update has been available on Android since this morning, the Telegram team complained that Apple took a long time to review the latest version of the app – which was only approved and released in a few minutes in the App Store.
Here is Telegram’s original statement criticizing Apple’s relationship with developers, which has already been removed from its website:
We want to apologize to all our iOS users for this launch on Android only. Apple failed to check this update in time, even though we submitted it to the App Store several days before sending it to Google Play. If you’re on iOS and want to try Telegram Video Calls, you’ll have to wait until Apple lets you – or switch to a platform that has more respect for its users and developers, like Android.
The Telegram platform now has over 400 million users with an app that is one of the 10 most downloaded messaging apps in the world.
You can download Telegram Messenger for free in the iOS App Store.
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