Better late than never, Telegram finally rolls out video calls

Back in April Telegram promised to add a video call feature to meet the video conferencing demands brought on by the coronavirus pandemic. At the time it seemed like Telegram were looking to capitalise on Zoom‘s security deficiencies. There may also have been a smidge of giving Zoom a run for their money but even then Zoom was walking away from the competition. It has been many moons since then but Telegram has finally delivered.

To mark their seven-year anniversary, Telegram announced in a blog post that their 400 million users (iOS and Android) worldwide can now use the platform to make video calls.

“All video calls are protected with end-to-end encryption. To confirm your connection, compare the four emoji shown on-screen for you and your chat partner – if they match, your call is 100% secured by time-tested encryption also used in Telegram’s Secret Chats and Voice Calls.”

Telegram

Video calls come with picture-in-picture mode, users can also switch video mode on and off like on any other messaging app that offers video calling.

For now, we will have to be content with one-to-one video calls because group calls are still in development. It would have been nice to have group video calls at launch, but there may be things Telegram is working on behind the scenes.