Wednesday, February 13, 2019

Testing video call apps on android phone, Duo and Whatsapp.

I've been testing both of these on my phone lately. I, for the longest time have been asked to get on whatsapp. I never did and even after they got hacked a while back it was less interesting to me. But now that many people seem to have it, I thought I give it a try after testing google Duo. So far both work very similar. However the video on Duo seems to freeze and lag a bit more than on whatsapp. I had a huge problem on another number I was calling. I could see everyone else but the person I wanted to chat with. I installed and uninstalled the apps on my phone to no avail. I even thought it was Duo interfering for some reason. Eventually I figured it was the app on the other phone and everything was working fine after that. The other issue I have had with whatsapp is that for some reason it won't pick up my BT headphones. It finally worked last night for the first time, but I have to test it a bit more. In short, other than skype and facebook on a computer, these are two other video programs that you can now use on your phone if you don't have an apple iphone which has what is called facetime. I didn't bother checking skype as it has ads on the app. So now everyone can video call, if you really want that. It's just nice to have options. I should mention, you do need internet on your phone in order to use these programs.

Whatsapp, skype and facebook can also be used on your desktop computer. Duo seems to only be on the phone. Keep in mind that you can also video chat through facebook messenger and facebook messenger lite. If you don't have a lot of memory on your phone I recommend using facebook lite and facebook messenger lite instead of the regular programs which are much larger in size. So far the lite versions are working much better for me.

I forgot to mention why having a video app on your phone is a good thing. If you're trying to help someone remotely but they don't have a computer, they can use the app to show you what they are looking at. So it can be a great tool not just for chatting but for helping someone remotely. Like the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words, but a video, well that's just priceless because now you can see what they see without having to guess or be there.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.tachyon&hl=en_US
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.whatsapp&hl=en_US

Saturday, February 9, 2019

Google contacts.

I was just trying to work on the google contacts, but their import is freezing the chrome browser. So watch out for that and back up your contacts before you try anything on the computer. I managed to save the files through the browser so we'll see what happens after they fix it. I thought I saved the files with the phone, but I'm not sure if those worked since I can't import anything there either. Just a heads up.