Video calls are definitely the popular thing now, with the COVID-19 pandemic going on. To meet the increased demand for the function, Google Duo increased the maximum number of participants in a video call. You can now have up to 12 participants in a video call, from the previous eight.
Google has planned more improvements to the app for the coming weeks as well. First, the company intends to push the number of maximum participants up even further. No number was given, nor was an exact number for the new limit of video callers.
Coming sooner than that is the rollout of a new video codec to improve video call quality. The new codec is called AV1, which features better compression rates for reliable calls even on low bandwidth connections. Google says this will roll out to its Duo app in the coming week.
As for features that are available now, one of them is Duo Moments. This allows you to take side-by-side stills of participants during a video call. Another feature that’s already available is the ability to save video messages, rather than just letting them expire 24 hours after they’ve been seen.
(Source: Google, Alliance for Open Media)
