As one of the pioneering instant messaging services on smartphones, WhatsApp has come a long way. However, few new features were introduced on the platform, as more chat apps grew in numbers and popularity. Starting immediately, WhatsApp is fixing one of its fundamental flaws.
Being a person who switches phones very often, this is a pain I face more severely than others: the sheer challenge of migrating my WhatsApp chats from one device to another. There’s even a lengthy guide on its website to show you how to do it, but in all, it takes close to 15-20 minutes if you manage to restore your chats properly on the new device. Get any of the steps wrong (or for some reason the new device isn’t able to recover your chat database you’ve copied to the new device) and you’re back to square one.
This is why today’s WhatsApp update is pretty significant. It’s supposedly been in development a whole six months ago, allowing WhatsApp users to back up their chat history and media onto Google Drive, which can then be used to restore onto another device from the cloud. It’s simple, intuitive and does not require the end user of manually copying and pasting files using a thumbdrive or a PC. The new feature will be rolling out to users in stages over the next few months, so don’t worry if this feature hasn’t yet reached your device.
The fact that it took so long for WhatsApp to implement this is indeed baffling, seeing as many users will still not be getting the latest version (v2.12.45) anytime soon. It’s even worse to think that iCloud integration on WhatsApp has been around for years.
Cloud backup is one of the many modern features WhatsApp users have been waiting for. However, the developers are still some way off from making WhatsApp the best chat app in the market, as anyone switching from an Android to iPhone (or vice versa) would understand.
(Source: Google Blog)
