Ok, it’s time to say what I think. This article is purely personal with my opinion, unlike my articles where I announce new features, but I think this reflects the reality.
I’m not really satisfied about the WhatsApp development.
Why? I know what they are working on even before I publish an announcement. I also know the state of the development of a specific feature (if it’s ready, it is really works etc). For example now I know a nice feature, that I will probably announce within 3 months, that will be surely available within 9 months…
I don’t understand why they are so slow.
I understand that a feature must be developed carefully, because WhatsApp is a really famous app.. but, for example, I think “Why is Telegram so fast with features?”.. so it’s not impossible.. if someone else is able to do quick and important updates, it means it’s possible.
It’s 2019 and we still send compressed photo natively. There isn’t an option to send a photo without compression natively.
We have phones with 10, 15, 20 megapixels and WhatsApp compresses them. Alright!
I understand that uncompressed photos might be an issue when the user wants to back up the chat history (causing a big backup), but the user should choose what to do.
It’s possible to send a photo as file to keep its quality, but the process (in particular on iOS) is highly cumbersome.
It’s 2019 and we still cannot listen a voice message while switching to a different chat.
We receive a PTT of 2 minutes and we cannot open another chat within those 2 minutes, otherwise WhatsApp stops to play it.
It’s 2019 and we are still waiting the Dark Mode, something I’ve announced that WhatsApp was working on since 2018, when other apps added it two/three years ago.
[tweet https://twitter.com/WABetaInfo/status/1040644441340608512]
It’s 2019 and we cannot hide our “online” status.
Sometimes we don’t want to show to our contacts that we are using WhatsApp, but there is that “online” thing…
It’s 2019 and we still cannot cancel an iCloud backup on WhatsApp for iOS!
My followers have experienced a lot of times problems where backups were automatically stopped without reasons and they were unable to restart them again.
I had to explain them some tricks to force the restart…
It’s 2019 and we need 2.05x times the size of the backup on iCloud.
It means that, if a backup is 1GB, we need 2.05 x 1 = 2.05GB free on iCloud in order to back up our chat history. This is one of the reasons why backups fail on iOS, and users don’t know why.
It’s 2019 and there is no communication between WhatsApp and their users.
Their Twitter account just RT useless tweets or they publish useless suggestions (“how to avoid spoilers in WhatsApp”, that was “mute groups and don’t open chats” 😅)
It’s 2019 and we still have a lot of useless limitations.
Do you need to send your ZIP file that contains important documents of your school or job?
You cannot, if the ZIP is 101MB. This is because you can send files within 100MB.
It’s 2019 and the option to save profile pictures of your contacts was silently removed.
I have never personally saved a profile picture of someone else, but why should they remove that option, when an alternative exists (screenshots)?
Why should they lose time to create a code that remove the “save” button, if the photo isn’t yours and it isn’t a group icon, when they could use that time to create a feature?
It’s 2019 and we still cannot edit messages within X minutes.
WhatsApp was working on an “Edit” feature when they started to work on “Delete message for everyone”, but they decided to remove the “Edit” feature.
Why? If the user made a typo in the message, he can delete it for everyone and send another one without the typo, in according to them.
But if he sends the same message with another typo? He needs to delete it for everyone again. 😅
It’s 2019 and our contacts still know when we delete a message for everyone.
Why should our contacts be notified when we delete a message for everyone?
For example, I wanted to message “Michael” but I wrongly send a message to “Melissa”.
I quickly delete the message for Melissa, but if I didn’t have to send any message to her (probably because she is an ex or what)…
It’s 2019 and we still have poor privacy settings.
For example, I want to publish a new profile picture about a new event where I was at, but I cannot because some contacts might see it and I don’t want…
We cannot exclude specific contacts from our privacy settings.
It’s 2019 and we cannot choose what the app badge counts.
Do you mute a group? You will still see the badge to increase every time you receive a message from it.
It’s 2019 and we still haven’t the possibility to enable auto-download settings for specific chats.
Do you have a chat that sends 100 images every day? You disable the auto-download setting.
Do you receive 2 images from your parents? You need to download them manually because you have disabled the auto-download settings.
But this is what I personally think. What do users think?
I’ve created a poll on Twitter, asking your opinion. Here you can read the best replies:
[tweet https://twitter.com/reza110786/status/1140807290661961728]
He is right. Why is Telegram able to make updates and features so quickly? Are they alien?
[tweet https://twitter.com/kodali30/status/1140809777355694080]
I partially agree. For example, on iOS we have the same UI from iOS 7, and this year iOS 13 will be out.
I hope they really decide to create a theme manager to help to customize the UI as the user want.
[tweet https://twitter.com/RubeneM/status/1140808226121953280]
I have always recommended to not use mods: they are unauthorized modified WhatsApp versions that might include malicious code, breaking the integrity and security of the app (for this reason WhatsApp is banning users that are using them).
On the other side, they offer more features.
It must be said that behind these modded versions there are very few people to develop them (three or four developers.. but I know modded apps developed by a single person!)
Why are they able to create a lot of features that users want and WhatsApp no? Is it a matter of laziness?
[tweet https://twitter.com/_shankarganesh/status/1140807333322166272]
He is right. Do you remember when Apple and Google have revoked all sticker apps?
They had to create something similar implemented from Telegram, for example.
[tweet https://twitter.com/yunior288/status/1140808169553371136]
You can send uncompressed photos sending them as file, but the process is very cumbersome.
If you want to send a photo as file on iOS, you need to:
- Open the Photos.app, select the photo and save it on iCloud / Files app.
- Open WhatsApp > Chat > + > Documents > select the photo.
It’s 2019 and we still have not a lot of things.
We got Screen Lock on iOS, Authentication and Dark Mode will be available on iOS and Android only because they will implement Status Ads in 2020, that’s annoying for the user.
With the Facebook acquisition, things had to improve about the development, but it still seems a common app that receive common updates.
They said that “If partnering with Facebook meant that we had to change our values, we wouldn’t have done it. Instead, we are forming a partnership that would allow us to continue operating independently and autonomously.”.
- Independently? Really? And what’s this?
- One of their values was to keep the app ad-free, as they said here “And you can still count on absolutely no ads interrupting your communication. There would have been no partnership between our two companies if we had to compromise on the core principles that will always define our company, our vision and our product.” and, in particular, here: “Brian and I spent a combined 20 years at Yahoo!, working hard to keep the site working. And yes, working hard to sell ads, because that’s what Yahoo! did. It gathered data and it served pages and it sold ads. […] Advertising isn’t just the disruption of aesthetics, the insults to your intelligence and the interruption of your train of thought. At every company that sells ads, a significant portion of their engineering team spends their day tuning data mining, writing better code to collect all your personal data, upgrading the servers that hold all the data and making sure it’s all being logged and collated and sliced and packaged and shipped out… […] Remember, when advertising is involved you the user are the product.“.
Conclusion: WhatsApp doesn’t seem interested to the community and probably one day we won’t be interested to WhatsApp if they continue so.