WhatsApp tests sending files of up to 2 GB

Mar 27, 2022 - 20:44
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WhatsApp tests sending files of up to 2 GB

You don't have to be a genius to notice that someone pressed the accelerator on WhatsApp a while ago.

And it is that, after a long season (of years) in which the news could be counted on one hand, at some point between the end of 2020 and the beginning of 2021, we began to see news of the new functions that were added (or at least tested in beta versions) in the service at a much higher rate than usual until then.

The most recent example is found in message reactions, which are already available in beta versions of WhatsApp apps, but also in surveys in group conversations, self-destructing messages, communities, security copies with end-to-end encryption, and, of course, the more than expected multi-device mode.

A tremendous year, but overshadowed by the controversy surrounding the company's announcement of revisions to the Terms of Service at the beginning of last year.

However, we can now add another innovation to the list: according to WABetaInfo, WhatsApp has already begun testing the ability to send files of up to two gigabytes using the service. Other services, like Telegram, already have similar capabilities, but WhatsApp's capacity restriction remains at a modest 100 megabytes.

This feature, which is now in beta mode, has been introduced in Argentina, so users in the country should be able to transmit huge files over WhatsApp.

It makes perfect sense that this feature arrives after multi-device compatibility has already been significantly improved because it appears that a considerable proportion of file transfers of that magnitude occur between a smartphone and a PC in some fashion.

There are no hints as to when this function will be extended from Argentina to the rest of the world, but we can anticipate that, barring problems with its operation, it is a movement that should not be delayed too much, not much more than measuring infrastructure needs and provisioning them.

Even more so when we consider that, as previously stated, other services that are direct competitors of WhatsApp already provide it. So, the sooner you implement it, the sooner you'll be on par with some of your competitors and able to overtake them with other new features.