WhatsApp is rolling out new features for Android beta users. The Facebook-owned company now independently encrypts your backups in the cloud and this feature is visible in the 2.21.15.5 Android beta update. The stable version of WhatsApp currently lets you store all your chats to a third-party app, Google Drive.
So, how does the encryption work? All your chats will be password-protected, so you will have to create a password using which you will be able to restore all your chats. Do note that if you forget the password, then WhatsApp won’t be able to restore your chat history.
WaBetaInfo asserted that “this password is private and it’s not shared with WhatsApp, Facebook, Google or Apple.” The feature also supports a 64-digit encryption key that can be used to restore your password. WhatsApp will help generate a random 64-digit encryption key, but if you lose this key, then you won’t be able to access all your data.
WhatsApp has added a feature called HD Photos, which allows you to choose the quality of the photos that you want to share with your contacts. The Android beta testers for WhatsApp get three different options selecting quality.
The first one is “Best quality,” which is self-explanatory, but it seems that WhatsApp isn’t giving an option to send very high-quality images. The “photos are still compressed, even if the compression is lighter. WhatsApp is actually applying a compression algorithm, keeping about 80% of the original quality and, if the photo is bigger than 2048×2048, the image might be resized. The old configuration allowed to keep about 70% of the quality, but large photos were always resized,” the cited source stated.
WaetaInfo suggests that the platform could increase the percentage of the original quality to offer better quality images. The other two options that you get are “Auto” and “Data Saver.” At the moment, it is unknown as to when the company plans to release these features for the public.
