Zee Media Bureau/Smriti Srivastava

Technology is all about making improvements and improvisations. Recently, WhatsApp brought about various changes and updates in its new version which were welcomed by the users. The Facebook-owned company WhatsApp always keeps the competition on its toes by launching new features every few weeks.

Pinned chats

WhatsApp has recently added a feature- Pinned chats. Justifying its name, it enables the users to pin chats of their interest on the top of the chat list. A maximum of 3 chats can be pinned at the top of the conversation list. Other latest chats appear below the pinned chats.
How To Pin A Chat- First long press the chat and then a ''pin'' icon will be visible to you at the top bar.

To reverse your action, you can again long press the chat and tap on unpin icon. This feature is useful in sorting out the heavy users as it might be a bit irritating to scroll again and again through a bulk of undesired chats to reach your desired chat window.

New redecorated Snapchat-like Status feature

This is the most significant update this year, the new Status feature was turned out to all users at global level in February. This feature replaced the text format status to enable users to update their status to a short video or multiple photos which will automatically disappear in 24 hours. It was quite clear that this feature was introduced to give a tough competition to Snapchat.

Media sharing limit increased to 30

WhatsApp has become a primary platform for sharing media after any event, gathering, meetings where pictures have been captured or videos have been taken. So it has increased the media sharing limit from 10 to 30. At first, it was spotted in January in Android beta but later it was welcomed on all platforms.

Change Number and Live Location feature

Its was recently reported that, WhatsApp is testing a new feature on the Windows Phone and Windows 10 Mobile platform. Its being said that this feature could make life less problematic when changing your contact number. To ease the transition, it is testing a feature which will provide notice to your friends and family about your number change for you. Also, the Live Location sharing feature was spotted in Android beta and this implies that it will soon be introduced on every platform for whatsApp.

Photo Bundling, Video Streaming, Photo Filter features

The Photo Bundling feature enables the WhatsApp users to send photos and videos to your contacts in form of an album. Users can now send a collection of photos to their contacts, who will receive them bundled in album format. All images are shown on a single page, once the album is opened. At present, this feature is available for iPhone and Android beta users.

The feature of video streaming was first spotted in android beta but in the stable versio it was first rolled out for iPhone users. Video streaming allows the users to watch shared videos while they are being downloaded in the background. Earlier, users had to wait for a video to get completely downloaded to watch it which depends on WhatsApp auto-download setting.

Recently, it also added colour filters to the media that you send in chats for iPhone users. These are Pop, B&W, Cool, Film, and Chrome, but more WhatsApp filters are expected to be added in early future.

All file type transfer

WhatApp is gradually turning out to support all types of file transfers (including archives) on Androids, iPhones, and Windows handsets with a limited quantity of users, avoiding any hindrance of WhatsApp file sharing. It will now allow users to share video in a wide variety of format- MP3 songs, APK files on WhatsApp. File sharing limit will still be at 128MB on iOS, 64MB on Web, and 100MB on Android.

Two-step authentication feature

This feature has introduced an additional layer of protection by requiring a passcode while resetting or verifying ones account. Its aim is to prevent unauthorised person from using your phone number without a six-digit passcode (set by the authorised user).

Siri can read your WhatsApp messages aloud

Siri, Apple's voice assistant, can now read your WhatsApp messages for you.

WhatsApp gave more abilities to Siri. There are four key highlights of this feature-

• One can ask Siri to read out ones latest messages.
• Visual improvements to the Calls tab, Contact info, and Group info screens.
• Ability to select multiple statuses at once in the My Updates screen which one can forward and delete.
• Support for Persian language.

WhatsApp text status is back

WhatsApp had replaced the text status feature, earlier this year, with another feature called 'Status' that enabled users to add images, videos and GIFs as their status. But, due to popular public demand WhatsApp has re-introduced its text status feature. As for now, this feature is only available to Android users. But in near future, it will also be rolled out to iOS users.

New video-calling button

WhatsApp introduced video chat feature on Android phones. The most significant change observed is the separate button for voice and video calls. Earlier, users had to tap the call button first and then make choice between voice and video calls.