We promise you, WhatsApp hasn’t been playing favorites and sending invites to the free voice calling feature to its most loyal users only. Last Friday, your friends, work mates or someone they know may have welcomed the free VoIP update to the WhatsApp messenger application. Now we are aware that the usual way of getting it is to receive an invite from a user who was lucky enough to see it pop up in their account in the first place.
When a WhatsApp user who has the free voice calling facility enabled on their phone dials up someone in their contacts list through the app, the receiver is also treated to it. That’s how the company was spotted testing the voice calling service on a couple of occasions, including last week when the feature appeared for Android. Before this, a Reddit member going by the name pradnesh07, had alerted everyone to the roll-out.
The VoIP service could apparently only be accessed by those with version 2.11.531 of the app from the official website or version 2.11.528 of it from Google Play Store. Friday’s launch wasn’t official in the sense that not everyone received the update. Those who did chance upon it had the option to automatically invite another person to receive it upon calling their number through WhatsApp, for a limited time period.
Also see: WhatsApp presses Play and then Pause on free voice calling feature for Android
It’s safe to bet that the company was only testing the free WhatsApp voice calling feature further and will eventually let it loose without leaning on an invite-based system. According to an older report, the service works on 3G and EDGE since even the higher speed mobile network services Indian telecom operators have to offer are quite pathetic and spotty, at best. The audio quality of calls is supposedly ‘crystal clear.’
Meanwhile, if you were lucky enough to snag access to voice calling on WhatsApp, you can still use it even though you can’t pass on the goodness to others in your contacts list.