Foreign.
Here. And welcome back to another Android Unmuted. And with me I have Liz. How's it going, Liz?
It's going fine. How are you?
I am good, thank you. So I thought today we would talk about messaging apps that are cross platform. So both iOS and Android. What do you think?
Sure, Sounds fantastic.
Yeah. So something that I was really surprised about that maybe you can talk about is that you can actually FaceTime video chat on an Android and an iPhone. And I had no idea that you could actually do that. Or maybe I did, but I haven't heard anyone actually doing it. So do you want to talk about that, Liz, a little bit?
Absolutely, I can talk about that. What I ended up doing, I was initiating the call from the iOS device, which to my knowledge is the only way that you can do that successfully. But I sent the information as a link, which is the way that you do that on the iOS device. From the iOS device, you create the link. That's actually the icon name of the button in the iOS app. It says create a link. You activate that and then you can share the link in various ways. I chose email. I then emailed it to myself and opened up the email message in the Gmail app on the Android device and tapped on the link and it opened up in the browser. And then I, which I thought this was interesting. Before I could join the meeting, I had to input a name for myself, which that's just something to note. The continue button is dimmed or grayed out until you actually interact with the edit field for your for a name and put something in there. I then chose the continue button in the browser on my Android device and then it also, in my doing that on the Android device popped up the usual. The first time you use apps or are in a particular situation on a device with let's say your camera or your microphone, it asks for permissions. And so I navigated those dialogue boxes and chose the settings that I wanted to have for those. And then it brought me into. After I then did that, it then brought me into the FaceTime call on the Android device and I was able to toggle the camera on and off. The interesting thing is that the on off toggles, they just say on and off. The labels for them are separate on separate areas of the device. It doesn't say mute on off, it'll just says on off. And then it will say mute to the right of it. Also, because I believe I toggled both the camera and microphone on, that is the initial state that it gives to Those icons. So for instance, for mute, for me, when I muted the microphone, it said the label for it. After I activated the mute option, it said what did it say on microphone? On. So I had to kind of understand that. And then when it, when mute was off, it said off microphone or something like that. But it was, it was kind of confusing. Honestly, it took me a while to get used to it, but that is just something to know. Also, I either did not successfully switch the camera from front to back. There is a control I had to expand an option that said show more controls, and then there was a flip to back camera button. And no matter how many times I activated that button, focus actually seemed to jump to a different section of the app or the app of the browser window. And it always just said flip to back camera. So I don't know if it actually ever successfully flipped and the name of the button was wrong or if that just didn't work for me.
But.
But overall, outside of those things being what they are, you can successfully, from an iOS device, initiate a FaceTime call to an Android device.
And on the Android side, with the video being like, through the browser, is that slow or sluggish? I mean, because you're not using a native app, so you really are kind of going over the Internet or in a web browser. Does it slow it down or make it clunky, or is it really not that bad?
I didn't think it was that bad. I really did not think that it. The browser experience was. Was a negative aspect of it.
And once you start the chat, or I should say when you're creating the link to start a chat with someone, will it only work through email or can you send it anyway? Like you can text it or email it, or does it matter? It doesn't as long as they get.
The link, can send it as a text message. There are different options that I had within the iOS share screen, the Create link screen. After I created the link to share it, I just chose email because it was the easiest thing for me at the time.
Yeah, cool. Well, that's cool. So I guess there's a way to FaceTime with Android and iPhone. So, I mean, maybe it's not a perfect scenario, but it works. And so that's pretty cool. I will say one of the apps that I have two, and I will start with the first one, which is WhatsApp, and I'll talk about some of the good and bad. Obviously the good is that it's everywhere. It's going to be on every Android you can put on any Android device, any iOS device, and it works on Windows and Mac and in the browser and in all the places. So the barrier to entry on that's going to be good because you're going to have the majority of people there. And if you're going to use a. A separate app, then you want to have something where there's going to be the most people because it's always hard to try and get people to get on a new app and install it and sign up and do all the things in order to, you know, have like a mainstay or have a place where an app where there's a lot of people that are going to be using it. So it's good that it's everywhere. So that's one thing. If you're looking for something with security, forget it. You know, it's made by meta and so you can decide whether you want to have anything on your phone that's meta or not. You know, people have very strict opinions on meta, so I'll just leave that there. So you're not looking at this app for any kind of security purposes or anything. They do say that when you text with someone it is encrypted, but that's only one to one. It doesn't encrypt in a group, so that's not so great. But, you know, I guess it's better than nothing. And also there's no sms, so you cannot end SMS with that app. But you can do regular text either in a group or with somebody one on one. And you can also do calling, so you can do an audio call or a video call. And it works pretty good, I guess. I mean, it's a meta app, so there you go. Do you have another app, Liz, you want to talk about?
Yes. The other app I will mention is the Google Meet app, or Meet as it's called, I believe on Android. At least that was what it told me when I found it in my device. And that app is available also on iOS and so you can successfully cross platform, make a call to and from both devices. The interesting thing in setting the app up on my Android device that I found was that when I went in, I at first chose not to share my contacts when the app asked me to share them, because I figured I would just add people as I needed them and had their information. But then I really, there wasn't really a way that I could see that that was helpful. And it also, I noticed, didn't have my history. I know I had used the app before. And so I, unfortunately, I suppose, for myself, had to allow access to my contacts. And then for some reason, that pulled up the history that the app had of the calls that I had made with the app.
Well, the last app that I wanted to talk about was an app called Signal, and it's a pretty popular app as well. It kind of came about because of the privacy settings. You get a lot more privacy with it. It does work on both platforms, so Android and iOS, and that is a good thing. You have to get people to either sign up for it or hope that people already have it. You know, we're going back to having to use a specific app, so there's that. But if you can do that, then people like it for its privacy because the messages are encrypted across the board. So whether you're talking in a group or you're talking one on one, messages are encrypted, unfortunately. Still, there's no sms, so there's no SMS there. So if that's something that's important to you, you'll have to figure out how to SMS somewhere else. You can also do regular calls and video and audio all in that app as well. So, yeah, I would suggest giving them a try and seeing what works for you. Or maybe there's an app out there that you feel might be a really good Android app that maybe we don't know about. We would love to hear that. So you could always email us at feedbackmute show to let us know what you're using. I'd love to hear what you're using for an alternative, alternative messaging app on Android. That'd be awesome. And do you have anything else, Liz?
The only thing I have is to make sure that you, whatever you're using, that you have something that you're using to keep in touch with friends and family as you might need to, especially in a situation where you need to relay information that might be urgent or emergent or ever, you know, evolving. It's important that we have ways to do that and that we're not figuring that out as the event is unfolding. That. That is not the time to figure that out.
No, definitely be prepared and plan ahead. For sure. All right. And with that being said, thanks, everyone. So we will love to hear from you. Feedbackmute Show. And we will see you next.