Facetime on Android? - But with a twist

At their recent WWDC event, Apple announced something that shocked us all. Facetime, their video calling app would now be available for Android and PC. But this is not what you think, as Apple would never give up their exclusivity.

Historically, this video conferencing application has been exclusive to Apple devices, and there was no way a non-Apple user could take calls through this service, but this tech giant is revising the rules.

Zoom, Teams, Meet and others should be ready because this might be the biggest challenge these services have faced so far in their history or is it?

Compared to other video conference apps such as Zoom, FaceTime is more secure with end-to-end encryption that it offers for all the users. On the other hand, Zoom also offers end-to-end encryption but only for premium accounts.

At the WWDC 2021 keynote event, Craig Federighi, Apple's Senior Vice President of Software Engineering, started by explaining how FaceTime will become more natural, comfortable.

Apple FaceTime is getting spatial audio support which will offer more natural sound calls. During the keynote, Federighi said that with iOS 15, users on FaceTime calls on Apple devices will experience as if the voice is coming out of the screen. The spatial audio feature was first introduced on the AirPods Pro last year, and it is a 3D surround sound feature by Dolby Atmos.

Apple made an excellent move to think of better voice isolation on FaceTime calls could be crucial to meet its success, especially when it \fights with dedicated meeting apps like Zoom, Teams, and Meet.

Additionally, Apple also announced two new options for the microphone, voice isolation, which knocks out ambient sound when you're on a call and only prioritises the user's voice.

One of the biggest features added to the FaceTime app is the ability to create FaceTime links. This means that users on iOS 15 will be able to generate a link for a FaceTime call and share it anywhere.With iOS 15, users will also be able to add a FaceTime call on the Calendar app and schedule it in advance, a neat addition.

And of course, they announced FaceTime coming to Android and Windows devices but it was not a Facetime app but rather a Web based client. With the FaceTime links, the company has made FaceTime shareable across services and allows people from non-Apple devices to join right from their browsers and even on the web. But again, since Apple does not want to give up complete control, they allow Android and PC users to only join FaceTime calls but to Create a call, you still require an Apple device. However, the good part here is that at least the calls will be end-to-end encrypted regardless of any user joining from a non-Apple device.