Hands-on with WhatsApp Calling for Windows Phone

News
By
last updated

Earlier this morning, the private beta of WhatsApp for Windows Phone received an update that enabled voice calling (VOIP) for the modern messenger service.

We got our hands on the latest release and demonstrate how it looks - and how it works - on our Lumia Icon calling an iPhone.

So how is it? The audio quality is magnificent, much better than you would expect for such a new service. In general, it is quite fast to make the connection to the other party's phone and it uses your WhatsApp number for identification purposes. There are clear indicators that it is a WhatsApp incoming call as well, plus users can decline and use messaging instead.

Public release and Skype

There's no word on exactly when the full Voice Calling feature will be rolled out to public users of WhatsApp on Windows Phone. Seeing as it now only spreading out to the beta group it is safe to say we are likely a few weeks out before things are finalized.

The good news here is we are not too far behind Android, who only received this feature a few weeks ago (plans for the service were announced in February 2014).

Can WhatsApp with voice calling beat Skype? Perhaps not for business users or those who like to jump on PC, tablet and phone, but for pure mobile we think WhatsApp has a good thing going.

Reminder

WhatsApp voice is only for the beta version of the app. The public version of WhatsApp that's in the Windows Phone Store does not yet have these features! Please do not ask about how to get access to the private beta, as there is no public sign-up method. Thank you.

CATEGORIES
Daniel Rubino
Daniel Rubino
Editor-in-chief

Daniel Rubino is the Editor-in-chief of Windows Central. He is also the head reviewer, podcast co-host, and analyst. He has been covering Microsoft since 2007, when this site was called WMExperts (and later Windows Phone Central). His interests include Windows, laptops, next-gen computing, and watches. He has been reviewing laptops since 2015 and is particularly fond of 2-in-1 convertibles, ARM processors, new form factors, and thin-and-light PCs. Before all this tech stuff, he worked on a Ph.D. in linguistics, watched people sleep (for medical purposes!), and ran the projectors at movie theaters because it was fun.