The Stuff office is rather found of Telegram, what many believe to be the most secure instant messaging service on the market today. Honestly, it’s nothing special but the extra security is definitely a decent reason to adopt it into the workplace over competitors like Slack or…WhatsApp, I guess.

Yet while Telegram is excellent for sending messages, it’s not great when it comes to video, an avenue the app has largely side-lined. Yet that’s set to change in the near future as a recent announcement from Telegram has confirmed that one-on-one video calls are being integrated into the software… if you have the mobile app.

While video calls were never high on Telegram’s development roadmap, the announcement of the update states that the team working on the project clicked that video calls were an important part of the 2020 workspace, given the fact that, you know, the entire world ended and is slowly starting to repair itself. Thus, the development team felt the need to implement video calls, a feature which is still in alpha and only available on the iOS and Android versions of the app. Sorry desktop users, you’ll have to wait a little longer or just use Zoom like everyone else.

The process is as simple as you’d expect. Just tap a person in your contact list and you’ll be given the option to video call them. Even better, you can turn off video whenever you want and continue as a pure audio call if your internet is giving some hassles. Of course, the most appealing part of this new feature is that the video calls will have end-to-end encryption, ensuring both users’ security and privacy.

Since we’re still talking about an alpha build of the feature, Telegram has confirmed that it will be improving and building on one-on-one video calls in the coming months as it eventually builds to the release of group video calls, a feature that was announced back in April and was slated for a late 2020 release.

(Source: The Verge)