FaceTime video chat competitor Google Duo released for iOS, Android

Google on Tuesday released its new chat client Duo, promising high quality video between iOS and Android users with the free download now available on both the iOS App Store and Google Play.

Google Duo was announced in May, and is cross-platform between iOS and Android. No Google account is necessary — connections are made between users' phone numbers after a one-time SMS verification.

The app provides mitigations by decreasing video quality for varying speeds of connections. Calls made on Duo are end-to-end encrypted.

Setting it apart from FaceTime, The "knock knock" feature in Google Duo shows the call recipient a live stream of who's calling and the surroundings of the caller before the recipient confirms the video chat request.

Initial AppleInsider testing showed an initial period of negotiation between devices, with the video quality oscillating between very good and poor — but the initial "knock knock" stream was consistently bad and severely pixellated. This negotiation period lasted about 10 seconds after the recipient accepted the call on both 4G and 802.11ac Wi-Fi, with consistent good quality thereafter.

Announced at the same time as Duo in May was Google's Allo chat service. Allo is not yet available.

Google Duo is available now, requires iOS 9 or greater, and occupies 28.2MB of device storage space.

38 Comments

SpamSandwich 32917 comments · 19 Years

About 8 years ago

Three uses of the word "initial" in this paragraph... Just sayin".

"Initial AppleInsider testing showed an initial period of negotiation between devices, with the video quality oscillating between very good and poor -- but the initial "knock knock" stream..."

mac_128 3452 comments · 12 Years

Doesn't Tango already do this to varying degrees? And Skype? Or does this work natively with Factime? Or is this just Googles FaceTime offering?

i have to say, this is where Apple's marketing genius comes into play -- "FaceTime" is a brilliant term that perfectly describes the technology. Even Tango works, or Skype which is a new word that means specifically that.

"Duo"? Let's Duo. I'm gonna Duo you later. Do you want to Duo? We can Duo if you want.

Did no one think through his branding?

elijahg 2822 comments · 18 Years

If that screenshot is Google Duo's best quality, they've got miles to go until it matches FaceTime.

FaceTime seems to work quite well when it actually rings, the negotiation speed is much improved in iOS 10. About half the time however the callee's phone doesn't ring, and there's no indication of the failure at all on the calling device, making it pretty much useless unless you pre-negotiate FaceTime over a normal call. Handoff between (Apple) access points is pretty poor too, with the call often dropping when switching.

Other than that I find it's generally very clear and very little lag, and the integration into the phone app is good.

Apple did promise to open the FaceTime API when it was introduced, but no cigar. Unfortunately a communications platform just doesn't work unless it's cross platform, you can't restrict yourself to only calling iOS device owners! iMessage has automatic fallback so not so much of a problem cross platform.