This week’s news that Facebook is preparing a rival to Snapchat showed that the messaging market is one of the most important growth areas in the mobile industry. But what if you actually want to see the person you’re chatting to? Network speeds have improved enough to mean video chats should a real possibility for most of us, so here are five of our favourite video messaging apps.
Skype
Probably the most famous video calling app, Skype is beloved by grandparents and gap-year students the world over, with over 250 million users across the world. Available on a wide range of devices across all platforms, the free app provides a quick and easy way to stay in contact with friends, colleagues or family. Now owned by Microsoft, the app also offers a great instant messaging service for when you don’t have video capability.
Tango
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Tango is one of the most popular third-party video call apps around, with its simple interface and good call quality attracting a large number of users. Video chats with up to 50 people are supported by the app and voice calls and instant messaging are also free to other Tango users, using your phone’s data connection instead, and you can even add multiple people to the two latter chat functions. The app also has an app store where you can purchase mini-games which you can then play with others during a video chat.
Google Hangouts
Google’s own service is also free to use, and comes pre-installed on nearly all new Android devices. However, you can use it to call iOS devices, so there’s no danger of any of your friends missing out. Where Hangouts really delivers though is in group video chat, where as many as 10 people can join a call, with chats also supporting photo and GIF sharing.
ooVoo
Providing both a cross-platform mobile and desktop service closely integrated to Facebook, ooVoo offers free video calls to as many as 12 contacts at once. Inside its colourful and quirky design, the app also includes a speed dial for your favourite contacts, status messages so that you can see if people are available before you call them, support for picture and video messaging, and the ability to pull in contacts from other services such as Gmail and Facebook.
Fring
Fring is similar to the other apps on this list, offering free, unlimited video chats – which can be to as many as four people – voice calls, and instant messages to other Fring users. But where it stands out is with its additional provision of low-cost paid phone calls ( known as "FringOUT" calls) to devices and landlines around the world, costing as little as a few pence a minute for many countries.
