Waiting for the micropayments scheduled for the coming year and the next frontier of our chats, where in addition to chatting and exchanging photos and links, we will also be able to pay off small debts with friends and why not, go shopping, Whatsapp is renewed. Not a complete restyling, mind you: the app, with 2 billion users worldwide, retains its fundamentals. But in the coming days some small innovations will appear on our smartphones that should improve the "on chat" experience.
1. The QR. Until now, to add a contact to Whatsapp, the only way was to enter his number manually. In short, to do this, just frame your QR code with the smartphone camera. And so the much mistreated QR, invented back in 1994, will take another revenge on its detractors. Let's get ready to see it everywhere: from business cards to email signing. Until the day someone says the fateful phrase: "Will you give me your QR?".
2. Dark mode for web and desktop. Let's face it: all that time in front of the screen does not help our sight, for this reason the big hi-tech companies have been offering the possibility of using the apps in "night" mode with clear texts on a black background for some years. On Android smartphones, the function has been available for a while and for some months it has also arrived on the iPhone, where, however, it follows the theme of the smartphone. So if we have activated the "Light" aspect, the WhatsApp app also appears in light colors, while when the "Dark" aspect is activated, the WhatsApp chats also turn black. The novelty of the last minute is that we can finally choose the dark mode even when we use Whatsapp from the web or with the computer app.
3. Improvements to group video calls. Maybe it had escaped you, but for a couple of months also Whatsapp allows you to make group video calls with 8 participants: just click on the Calls tab, tap on the icon of the telephone receiver next to the "+" symbol and choose the option "New group call". At this point we just have to select the contacts to call and start the call, voice or video. Soon, and here's the news, it will be easier to focus on one participant at a time: just hold down his video to view it in full screen, leaving the others in the background. Not only that: now there is also the video icon in chats with a maximum of 8 participants, to be able to start a group video call with a single touch. A spite at Zoom and Google Meet? Thinking wrong ...
4. New stickers coming soon. We had just managed to accept that in a conversation, between the words, emojis with an often arcane meaning flourished, a trend sanctioned also by a very serious book: "Digitaliano" (Various Authors, Franco Angeli edition). Then in January the animated stickers appeared and the conversations, especially with the younger ones, began to resemble an episode of a cartoon. The idea of the developers of Whatsapp must have been liked a lot, so much so that they are now relaunching with new stickers "increasingly fun and expressive". So we can no longer say we were speechless.
