Quality is very important when it comes to video calls. It slaps different when you can see your family and friends in HD quality rather than weird three tone coloured pixels. That’s probably the reason why Google is working on bumping up the quality in the Duo video chatting app.

Google Duo Upgrades

This upgrade is all thanks to a new video codec technology Google plans to roll out in the next week. The codec, called AV1, is the product of an industry-wide consortium called the Alliance for Open Media.

AV1 is the successor to VP9 and can produce significantly higher data compression rates than prior standards. This makes it great for mobile video applications like streaming TV shows and live video calling.

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Long story short, according to Google, even low-bandwidth video calls will be much higher quality than before. The codec change will also help with video call stability, too.

Google said it’s seeing an astounding increase in Duo usage, including an 800% increase in video messages. For that reason, Google says it’s changing its policy on those video messages. Videos can now be recorded and sent to friends for viewing. This is so that they can be saved automatically instead of expiring after 24 hours.

Additionally, the company is also releasing a new photo mode for Duo starting today. You can capture and then share side-by-side photos of you and one other person on your call. Google says it also plans to increase the group call size from 12 participants after raising the limit from eight late last month.

Companies like Google, Houseparty and Zoom are racing to add new features. Particularly, in Zoom’s case, ensuring security and privacy stays intact.