Messaging and voice-over IP service WhatsApp is testing a new feature thatwill let people message without using their phone for the first time.
Presently, WhatsApp is linked to a user’s phone. Its desktop and web appsneed that device to connect and receive messages. But the new feature willlet users send and receive messages “even if your phone battery is dead”.
Up to four other devices – like PCs and tablets – can be used together,WhatsApp said on Thursday.
To begin with, the new feature will be rolled out as a beta test for a”small group of users”. The team plans to improve performance and addfeatures before enabling it for everyone.
End-to-end encryption – a key selling point for WhatsApp – will still workunder this new system, it said.
Several other messaging apps already have such a feature, including rivalencrypted app Signal, which requires a phone for sign-up, but not toexchange messages.
But the feature has long been requested by WhatsApp users – of which thereare a reported two billion.’A rethink’
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Facebook engineers said in a blog post announcing the move the changeneeded a “rethink” of WhatsApp’s software design.
The company said this is because the current version “uses a smartphone appas the primary device, making the phone the source of truth for all userdata and the only device capable of end-to-end encrypting messages foranother user [or] initiating calls”.
WhatsApp Web and other non-smartphone apps are essentially a “mirror” ofwhat happens on the phone.
But that system has significant drawbacks familiar to many regular users,as the web app is known to frequently disconnect.
