Many people quickly send a photo via WhatsApp to family or friends. WhatsApp shrinks these photos, which has advantages, but also disadvantages. You will soon be able to choose whether the photos are resized or not.
Send photos via WhatsApp
In 2017, we already conducted research into sending photos via chat apps such as WhatsApp. These apps are often used to send photos. What not everyone knows, however, is that photos are reduced in size when sending via some of these apps, with quality being lost. This means the files are sent faster and you can save your mobile data.
The disadvantage is that the quality of the photos is significantly reduced. Our research showed that WhatsApp also compresses the photos: “If the photos do not have to be immortalized in optimal quality, then Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp offer reasonable quality.”
Fortunately, that’s about to change, because, in the latest beta of WhatsApp, WABetaInfo discovered a new feature in the video quality settings so you can send videos in the best quality available. The same setting will also be made for images so that you can choose the quality for both later.
You can choose from three options:
- Automatic (recommended): WhatsApp determines per image how it can best be sent/resized.
- Best Quality: WhatsApp will send the image in the best quality available.
- Data Saver: Compression is enabled when ‘Data Saver’ is enabled in your Android settings.
This feature also popped up in the rumor circuit before, and then we wondered how WhatsApp applies the compression to the files. For example, it is not known how much mobile data you can save with the Data Saver mode compared to the Best quality.
We also don’t know yet how WhatsApp automatically determines whether video files are greatly reduced. So there are still plenty of questions about this new feature and hopefully, WhatsApp will announce more about it soon, when it launches.
Availability
Please note that the ability to select the photo and video quality is currently under development. So the functions are not yet accessible to users with the latest version. We hope that features for both photos and videos will be rolled out at the same time and most likely they will first be in beta before making their way to the stable release. Follow this link to join the WhatsApp beta program.
