WhatsApp Tests Big Upgrade to File Transfer Size Limit
WhatsApp may have an upgrade in the works for those who want to transfer bigger files.
The app is currently testing an expanded file size limit for transfers, from 100MB to 2GB, Argentinian journal La Nacion reports. For now, the test is running exclusively in Argentina but is available on Android and iOS as well as desktop and web apps. Users in Argentina can also send these larger files to users outside the country.
WhatsApp selected Argentina as a test area because WhatsApp is popular there, and people in the region access the service on a variety of devices, La Nacion explains.
There’s no guarantee that WhatsApp will roll out the extended file size limit to other countries in the future, but it would be a sensible play from a competitive standpoint. WhatsApp competitor Telegram currently allows for 2GB file transfers between users, and it previously had a 1.5GB limit as far back as its launch in 2013.
The two messaging services have considerable overlap in their capabilities as well as their emphasis on encryption, a message recently driven hard by a series of advertisements for WhatsApp during the 2022 Academy Awards. However, Telegram lags far behind WhatsApp in users counts, according to data compiled by Statista, so Telegram’s features may not be the strongest motivator for WhatsApp.
We’ll have to wait and see if the feature is expanded to other regions, but the 4K video recording capabilities of smartphones aren’t making the sorts of files people share any smaller. When WhatsApp introduced disappearing messages on Android in November 2020, it was eight months before the feature came in beta to iOS users.
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