LONDON: WhatsApp’s Voice Calling service was extended to BlackBerry 10 and iOS and soon, the Windows Phone users will receive it, too. WhatsApp is a free messaging application (in the first year) which needs an Internet connection to send and receive messages containing simple texts or images, voice and video messages. You will need a data plan with lots of megabytes, if you want to make voice calls, or you can use your WiFi connection and spare your MB.
When installing WhatsApp (the APK file can be downloaded from the official website, whatsapp.com), you will see three tabs: Calls, Chats and Contacts. To check your calls log, you will tap on the first tab, but if you want to call someone, tap on the name of the person from the Contacts tab and you will have the option to chat or to make a voice call. You will be able to call ONLY your WhatsApp friends, if they are using Android, iOS or BlackBerry, because the other platforms don’t have this option enabled and don’t support voice calling. Also, you won’t be able to call your friends if they’re using Facebook or other messaging application.
Voice Calling is free, but it “costs”… mobile data!
If you live in India and you’re placing calls with WhatsApp, it seems that 1 minute of conversation will eat around 280 KB of data, while 5 minutes will eat up to 1.1 MB of data. According to some tests, a WhatsApp Call from India to USA will eat 330 KB/minute and 1.25 MB/5 minutes. These results were obtained after testing the feature with Onavo Count app and making voice calls over 3G and WiFi. According to the test, it resulted that the data usage is pretty high, but it’s more convenient to make a Voice Call on WhatsApp, than a phone call. Don’t take this test for granted, because the data usage may differ from country to country and from carrier to carrier, but at least we gave you an idea about how much a Voice Call “costs” on WhatsApp.
Voice Calls quality
WhatsApp is still behind other rivals such as Skype or Viber when it comes to voice calling quality, because the service still has some problems with lags and the calls are not HD.
