Reading the comments... You guys know that any 3G/4G phone with a camera can make videocalls with awesome quality, right ?
Google Duo, a simple 1-to-1 video calling app
131–140 of 379 posts
Re: Google Duo, a simple 1-to-1 video calling app
#132Sounds like Duo has a simple user experience, which is great. But it doesn't solve the eye-contact problem with video calls today. When you look at the person on the screen whom you're talking to, that person sees you looking away, because you're not looking into the camera, which is somewhere on the edge of the screen. So you don't make eye contact with the person you're talking to. And for me, that makes video call…
Entirely agree with you. This is the missing link in terms of making Video chat a good experience. I find voice is better because I concentrate on what the person is saying. With video I feel like my brain is exhausted trying to compensate for misread visual cues and trying to simulate eye-contact. Also that thing of seeing yourself is horrible...you keep monitoring your own expression which is just weird.
Re: Google Duo, a simple 1-to-1 video calling app
#133Wow this is so much the future... Between my 4g video native capability, skype (remember), facetime, etc. that was missing. Thank you Google for putting well-paid engineers to solvant this.
How does this add any value above existing products that do the same?
Re: Google Duo, a simple 1-to-1 video calling app
#134Reading the comments... You guys know that any 3G/4G phone with a camera can make videocalls with awesome quality, right ?
For only 60c/minute and I think I've had one call where it was correctly configured kn both ends.
Re: Google Duo, a simple 1-to-1 video calling app
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Hangouts is able to mix voice, video and text just fine. For varying values of "just fine". For me, hangouts is probably the worst performing app on mobile, desktop and tablet. It's so bad that even Skype shames it. And FaceTime...well let's not even compare.
Hangouts has always worked a lot better for me than Skype and Facebook video chat. Both on Android and desktop.
Doesn't it use VP9? Tends to kill hardware acceleration, so very battery draining.
But aside from that it has generally been way more reliable for me too.
Re: Google Duo, a simple 1-to-1 video calling app
#136I know these will be preinstalled on Android, but many friends and family use iOS and I will feel silly asking them to install Duo and Allo. Hangouts is able to mix voice, video and text just fine. Why start requiring separate apps? This is Google at its dumbest. They are squandering the small amount of momentum Hangouts has.
Haven't used an iPhone in over a year but isn't this the same on iOS with Facetime and iMessage? One for video calls one for text messages?
Re: Google Duo, a simple 1-to-1 video calling app
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem is that I want such an app to exist (and thrive), but that history taught me not to get my hopes up when it comes to Google products. Chances are they will fail to gain a significant userbase and/or the product (better yet project) will be discontinued.
I don't see a better app at the moment since Skype got bought by Microsoft and all the encryption got nerfed. Although I get where you're coming from. It would also be nice if all products discontinued by google would just get open sourced. They are basically saying it's useless to them so why not let somebody else give a try.
"better app" can just be an app with less features, that's more buggy, that's going to be around in ten years. Mom and dad don't need to go learning a new app every couple of years.
Video chat has been around since forever. Having a major player like Google wade into the fray, destroy all the small fry, then bail out (as it has done many times before)? Not good for the market.
Re: Google Duo, a simple 1-to-1 video calling app
#138It sounds like they're just trying to replace Facetime. I know my parent adore Facetime but they don't know all about this email stuff. They just know they want to call me.
What email stuff?
Re: Google Duo, a simple 1-to-1 video calling app
#139I like that the apps name is tachyon.
Re: Google Duo, a simple 1-to-1 video calling app
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
A major difference is that in the US text messages and MMS are usually free, so there's not a lot of pressure to move to a different communication medium. In lots of other countries you pay several cents for each individual text message and MMS cost several tens of cents. And this is for domestic messages. With international messages (which you often use because you're country is likely to be much smaller than the US…
SMS' can be free in a lot of European countries, the main difference is that MMS didn't really take off in Europe as much as it did in the US so they usually cost more. Also since people weren't that attached to MMS, it was easy to 'replace'
For most of the 2000's MMS didn't work until you went into settings and entered an MMS gateway address or something. Which nobody did since they never used MMS anyway.