On Friday, the news resurfaced when WhatsApp reopened its servers to activate the much-anticipated voice calls . Just 24 hours later, the activation servers were shut down again, and once more users have to wait for them to be reactivated to enjoy this highly anticipated voice communication service over the network.
In today's post, I'm going to recommend my three favorite apps for making completely free voice calls over the internet. Many of you probably already know these apps and have them installed on your Android devices, and you might not even know that you can also make VoIP calls with them , sometimes even with higher quality than WhatsApp's popular voice calls.
My three favorite applications for making calls over the Internet
1st - Facebook Messenger
One of the reasons Facebook separated its famous chat from the official Facebook app to release Messenger was to give the Messenger app new and interesting features that were not available in its Facebook-linked version.
From Facebook Messenger , we can make free voice calls to any user in our Facebook contacts without them needing to have the app installed. These voice calls also consume very little data and, at least in my tests, offer the best sound quality, whether over Wi-Fi or 3G/4G data.
2nd - Google Hangouts
Google Hangouts , or the old Google Talk, is undoubtedly my second favorite app for making free voice calls over the internet . It's an app that closely rivals Messenger in terms of sound quality and even offers high-quality video calls with excellent audio and video.
Unlike Facebook Messenger, Hangouts will need to be installed on the device of the contact you want to call. However, this is quite common, as it's a native Google app and comes pre-installed on many Android devices , so it won't be difficult to find that your friends are already using the app.
3rd - WhatsApp
In third place, and quite far behind the other apps I've mentioned, we find WhatsApp for Android , which is gradually incorporating voice calling functionality for users of the most popular instant messaging app. This new feature sounds impeccable over a good Wi-Fi connection , although it starts to falter considerably when used over mobile data.
It should be noted that the application is still in a beta phase , a fairly advanced beta, but one that still needs significant improvement and will likely be improved in the coming weeks.
Regarding apps like Line , which I know many of you loyal users won't understand why it's not in my top three, or apps like Viber, the main reason for not including them is that neither of my personal contacts likes them. Since I can't find them, having these two apps installed is pointless. In the case of Line, there's also the compelling reason of its significant battery drain on my Android device , something I've observed on every Android phone where I've installed the app.