Mountain View, California — Global search engine giant, Google on Thursday unfurled video chatting capabilities into Google Talk for Android smartphones, and unlike Apple’s Face Time, it works over Wi-Fi and 3G/4G, as part of version 2.3.4 of the mobile operating system.
Often, just an expression on a person’s face tells much more than what the words can say. To help you stay in touch with your friends and family, we are launching Google Talk with video and voice chat for Android phones.
According to the Google Mobile blog, with the newly released service, users will be able to video or voice chat with their friends and family directly from an Android phone. Users will soon be able to make calls through Google Talk over Wi-Fi, 3G and 4G data networks to other Android users as well as those using Goolge services. The service will be rolled out beginning with Samsung Nexus S smartphone.
Video chat buffs can breathe a sigh of relief as the video chat feature will be available over the mobile network and Wi-Fi as well. The newly launched service will only be available to users running the latest version of Android on their devices, version 2.3, or Gingerbread. This release points to the issue many developers have been complaining about; Androids fragmentation.
Moreover, users can now video or voice chat with their friends, family and colleagues right from their Android phone, whether they are on their compatible Android tablet or phone, or using Gmail with Google Talk on their computer. You can make calls over a 3G or 4G data network (if your carrier supports it) or over Wi-Fi.
Using the new features is simple. On your Android device, from the Google Talk contacts list, you will see a video and voice chat icon appear next to your contacts. While video chatting, any text chats from that person will also appear overlaid on the video. When switching to a different application while video chatting, video will be paused while audio will continue to run in the background. Touch the button for the feature you would like to use, and chat away.
“You can now video or voice chat with your friends, family and colleagues right from your Android phone, whether they’re on their compatible Android tablet or phone, or using Gmail with Google Talk on their computer,” Google’s Product Manager Colin Gibbs and Wei Huang, tech lead, write on the official Google Mobile Blog.
To learn more about using video and voice chat, check out our Help Center.
To see how Google Talk with video chat works, check out this explanatory video from Google.
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