If you are too happy that WhatsApp has received the voice calling featureand it is time to make unlimited calls, hold your horses because the feature is not as cheap as you might have assumed.
For the sake of people who don’t know too much about the technical things that go behind a WhatsApp voice call, here is a quick overview. When you make a call over the internet, be it using a Wi-Fi access or by using your 3G connection, the call will use your internet bandwidth to transfer conversations to and fro. Compared to a call made through a telephone carrier, this one is much cheaper, especially if you call people living in another country. But, there seems to be a slight issue in this now.
Data Usage Analysis
AndroidPit, a popular Android analysis and news reporting website spent time to know what WhatsApp actually downloads when you make a call. Compared to a telephone call, this one is completely different because it doesn’t calculate distance. You could either choose to call someone living in your own city or a person who is thousands of miles away but the cost for each call will be the same.
In the detailed analysis conducted by the experts, it was confirmed that when you make a call using WhatsApp, it uses a massive 1.3 Mb of data per minute. It is quite high when compared to Viber which is the most popular choice among users for making voice calls. The competitor app uses only 240 Kb per minute which is really less and will allow you to make more number of calls or speak for long hours without exhausting your download bandwidth.
When using WhatsApp, you could easily use up to 500 MB of data if you speak continuously for six hours. That allows you to make calls for just 11 minutes every day which is too less and if you decide to speak for more hours, it wouldn’t be surprising if you have exceeded your monthly bandwidth quota every time.
WhatsApp vs Viber
Given the data analysis, it is evident that Viber is the best voice calling app even now because it makes it easier for users to make long distance calls without gobbling up the available bandwidth space. WhatsApp is still in its early stage and developers may optimize it for reduced data consumption in the future but if they fail to do so, then introducing such a feature doesn’t make sense.
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