The latest WhatsApp feature brings the option to send photos in HD instead of a lower quality. This new option will preserve image quality on large photos that could benefit from limited compression.
Apps like WhatsApp found themselves preferred by many users in the age of SMS texting simply because sending and receiving photos was almost compression-free. While that’s – mostly – no longer an issue, the app still emphasizes sending high-quality images.
The most recent WhatsApp update on Android – announced via Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta broadcast – adds a new function that will limit the amount of compression the app does to a photo before it’s uploaded and sent out (via The Verge). The new feature isn’t a setting in-app so much as an option on a per-photo basis.
When sending a photo in WhatsApp, a new “HD” button will appear at the top of the photo edit screen. Tapping it opens a two-option card. The user can choose to leave the image in its default “Standard quality” or they can ensure the image maintains its resolution with “HD quality.”
This new feature first appeared in a beta version of the app back in June, which gives some additional context beyond Mark’s recent announcement.
To be clear, it looks like the image is still compressed when sent through WhatsApp, however, the new HD photo option retains the same resolution. The end result is a full-sized image that contains much more data. Once sent, each image preview will contain a small “HD” tag that lets the sender/recipient know that the image in chat is HD. The function was seemingly limited to photos in the beta, however, it looks like the option is coming to videos as well.
WhatsApp’s new HD images will roll out to both Android and iOS users over the coming weeks and will allow them to fine-tune image sending based on a variety of factors, like internet speed and data consumption.
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