I also experienced troubles connecting this video mode at times, even immediately after I had finished a successful video call to the same person on Hangouts. This makes its seem like a bit of an afterthought. In order to initiate a video call you have to start a voice call, then switch the video option on from there. Viber is something of a mid-sized player on the messaging and video calling scene, but it received a massive boost when it was purchased by Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten at the beginning of the year for $900 million.Īlways a solid VoIP service, Viber only added video calling to its mobile app very recently, and it shows. That’s because Google has provided access to Hangouts in your Gmail and Google web accounts, stashed discretely but clearly in their respective side bars.įrom the Hangouts and Google pages it’s a small matter to start a video Hangout, while they also allow you to invite multiple contacts to a video Hangout. There is a core Hangouts hub, but it’s pretty useless, and you probably won’t bother using it. Google’s desktop implementation of Hangouts is a little different to other services. Go into a contact or message thread and you’ll see the option to initiate a video call – nice and simple.
VIBER VIDEO CALL WINDOWS PHONE ANDROID
The current Android app, as well as the more settled iOS Hangouts app, work pretty pretty well on all counts.
It hasn’t always been particularly intuitive, and it’s easy to see why – it serves an SMS app, emoji-heavy IM service, and voice and video calling service rolled into one. The Hangouts app has been through a slightly dizzying array of iterations on Android. It’s now the default messaging app (or at least one of them) for new Android phones, and it also forms an integral part of the Google social network. Google has gradually positioned its Hangouts app as its one central messaging and communications hub. Indeed, we dare say that many casual Facebook users probably don’t even know this is a possibility.Īll in all, video calling on Facebook feels like a nice bonus option rather than a front-and-centre service. Like the mobile app, this isn’t really Facebook’s area of focus. You can initiate video calls through here too, by clicking on a contact in the side bar and hitting the little camera icon. Put simply, we wouldn’t use this as our first-choice video-calling app, but if you’re heavily invested in Facebook (and there’s a good chance that you are) it’s a nice option to have.įacebook, of course, is mainly accessed through a desktop web browser. Instead, you have to navigate to the contacts tab, or go into the individual contact and select the phone icon. Indeed, the ability to initiate a direct video call isn’t immediately apparent – there’s no shortcut from the timeline menu. These messages can involve text, photos, and brief video clips, and they’re all sent using Facebook’s familiar circular profile pictures. But is it a fair reflection of the software?įacebook Messenger is focused on sending instant messages above video calls. This negative feedback would appear to be from a vocal minority that feel like Facebook has strong-armed them into using the app. Facebook Messengerįacebook’s transition to a dedicated messaging app has not been a smooth one – as the Facebook Messenger iPhone app’s average 1.5 out of 5 rating will attest to. It’s worth noting that video call quality is uniformly strong across the board here, to the point where it’s more dependent on the quality of your connection and your proximity to it than any great differences in software.Īs such, this is more a look at the interface and approach to video calling from each service. We thought now would be a good time to take a look at five of the top video calling services out there and find out which is the best for you. In recent years, video calling has gone from being a slightly finicky desktop-bound activity, essentially used as a long-distance phone call replacement, to a viable means of talking to anyone face-to-face wherever we are.Īdvances in smartphone and network technology have played a large part in this, of course, but another factor is the proliferation of high quality video calling software. Facebook Messenger vs Google Hangouts vs Viber vs Skype vs FaceTime
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