We see its parent firm routinely update the app with plenty of new features and offerings, each one making it better and more enhanced than before. This is why we often see critics giving the platform owned by Meta credit where it is due and rightly so.
Despite plenty of other rivals in the business, WhatsApp continues to hold its ground firmly. But does that mean it’s perfect, well, far from it is the answer? And that might have something to do with its multi-device connectivity.
We agree the offering is wonderful and easily loved for obvious reasons. Many people adore the fact that you can log into your main device and at least four others. The only catch here is to ensure your main account is on your phone and nowhere else.
So you can use WhatsApp web from four other PCs without even being online on your phone. It’s definitely convenient but that does come with a fair share of problems. It lacks a lot of the core features that we see on the main account and we’re still wondering why.
Remember, multi-device connectivity is nothing new. It’s been there for nearly a year and each time around, we hear the firm is working on betting the support. But users are getting tired. They’re just not able to enjoy the offering as they should. What’s the point of having some and not all features on WhatsApp web? There has to be some explanation.
Below, we’re breaking down where exactly the lacking is and why quite a few users are getting frustrated by the second.
First things first, WhatsApp on the desktop does not allow its users to speak directly to those whose contact details haven’t been saved first. It’s the same rule as what we’ve been seeing for the parent device so no big differences here. But at the same time, it can get annoying when you can’t engage in a chat because you didn’t save the contact on your phone.
Secondly, you cannot update your status, even if you wanted to. Yes, you heard that right. The feature can only be done from your main account which is on your smartphone. It can’t be done from another linked device, no matter how hard you try.
So if you were worried about the woes of not saving contacts, well, there’s plenty more from where that came from with this feature. Oh, and selfies taken from your webcam are definitely included in this.
But you are allowed to view other people’s statuses and send out reactions and comments to those. And that’s about it.
Where it is bad, we’d like to shed light on some goodness too. Alerts linked to calls or texts don’t disappear when you log into one device and not the other. It’s probably one of the best features that we couldn’t be more grateful for.
The overall verdict is that WhatsApp needs to up its game if it takes this much pride in this multi-device connectivity feature. We understand that some things are still in beta and that support is a long and painstaking process. But almost two years is a long time and we hope to see some progress soon on this front.
The take-home message here is simple. Stop introducing a bucketload of new features when you’re having this much trouble fixing the old ones. What do you think?
Read next: Next WhatsApp Update to Bring Two Major Changes to the Table
by Dr. Hura Anwar via Digital Information World
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