Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy S20 lineup as well as the foldable Galaxy Z Flip could debut a new way of communicating through video messages. The Korea Herald reports that Samsung could integrate Google Duo in its native messaging app.
The South Korean company is apparently in talks with Google and local telecom operator SK Telecom to enable the new “video chat service.” It’s unclear if Samsung is also talking to other telecom operators around the world for the same.
The so-called video chat service will reportedly work over RCS messaging already available on Samsung phones.
Related: RCS Vs WhatsApp: Thoughts from a long-time WhatsApp user
“This would advance cross-device messaging services for videos of less than 5 megabytes, free of data charges, competing against popular over-the-top messaging services like WhatsApp,” states the report.
It goes on to say that Google Duo would be made usable alongside Samsung’s default messaging app — Samsung Messages. The aim is to apparently eliminate the need of downloading additional video messaging apps and save data usage costs.
How will it work?
We’re not exactly sure how Samsung’s Duo integration would work or if it will actually help save data charges.
Currently, media files less than 5MB in size can be shared through RCS messaging without any data consumption. However, if Samsung were to allow video calls through the Duo integration, the data consumed would definitely be higher than 5MB, therefore, incurring internet usage charges.
Then again, this could just be a service which lets you record and share short video messages from within the Samsung Messages app.
Last year, Samsung had a partnership with Instagram which allowed Galaxy S10 users to post Insta Stories directly through the phone’s camera app. The Google Duo partnership could be on similar lines to enhance the usability of Samsung’s own messaging app.
Guess we’ll only find out how the new feature works once Samsung launches the new Galaxy flagships on February 11.
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