WhatsApp was working in these months on a new service to share media, in order to guarantee a better reliability and quality of data: the Multi Media Server protocol.
This protocol, developed by Microsoft, has been adopted by WhatsApp to share media, that are hosted now on Facebook servers.
MMS is used by WhatsApp to transfer all multimedia data in real-time, and it’s the same protocol used for implementing the video streaming feature, recently enabled for all iOS users.
MMS ROLLED OUT TODAY
Since today, WhatsApp is rolling out for all iOS users the MMS protocol for sharing GIFs, Documents and Videos, that will be able to be simultaneously downloaded.
Simultaneous downloads were already supported, but now WhatsApp is managing by their servers how many GIFs/Documents/Videos the user can simultaneously download, and WhatsApp can change this value when necessary.
The user experience won’t change, visually: you will continue to share media as always and, obviously, shared media using this new protocol will continue to be end-to-end encrypted, ensuring a better service thanks to MMS.
WhatsApp is still working to implement the support for sharing Images, Audio files and Voice Messages, that will be remotely available later.
There will also be the possibility for sharing Images without be compressed (and without be shared as file) thanks to the Multi Media Server protocol. WhatsApp is working on it, but there is no idea if they will really enable this: if they will do, you will be surely notify on Twitter, our Telegram channel and visiting this website.
Android and Windows Phone users will have to wait more to see enabled this protocol: when the service will be available also for these users, @WABetaInfo will announce it.
UPDATE: WhatsApp is rolling out today the Multi Media Server service for GIFs and Documents for Android users.
The Multi Media Service is not enabled for Videos (it is for iOS users).
UPDATE (September 01, 2017): WhatsApp is rolling out today the Multi Media Server service for Windows Phone for all media types: Images, Videos, Audio files, Voice Messages, GIFs and Documents.
iOS can use the Multi Media Server protocol for Videos, GIFs and Documents only.
About Android, WhatsApp is testing in this week the Multi Media Server protocol for Voice Messages, but it’s currently disabled.