I was able to see her, but she could only hear me. But while talking with my daughter, the video of me cut out when I turned off my Wi-Fi radio. The app is supposed to be able to keep a video call going even if your phone switches from Wi-Fi to a cellular network. The video was generally smooth, although there was a hiccup in it. I was able to return her call quickly by simply tapping on a thumbnail picture button on the Duo home screen. My wife was able to easily place a call from her iPhone to mine using the app. On Tuesday, I did a quick test of Duo, which Google announced in May at its annual developer conference. If users tap on that button, they’ll see a list of friends who they can call on the app. Where FaceTime’s home screen offers a list of contacts users have recently called, Duo show users a view of themselves and a big “video call” button. Knock Knock allows the recipient of a call to see a live view of the person placing the call to get a sense not only of who is calling but why.Īnd Duo has a simpler initial view than FaceTime. Dubbed Knock Knock, it offers a kind of preview of the video call. Google also gave Duo a cool feature that FaceTime lacks. “Duo takes the complexity out of video calling, so that you can be together in the moment wherever you are.”ĭuo has one big advantage over FaceTime - it allows Android users to place video calls to iPhone owners and vice versa. “Video calling is the next best thing to being with someone in person, but too often it can be a frustrating or complicated experience,” Justin Uberti, a principal software engineer, wrote on Google’s company blog site. As with Apple’s app, users can simply tap on a friend’s name from their address book and connect. Google designed Duo to be like FaceTime - easy to use. On Tuesday, the search giant released Duo, its new video calling app, and I gave it a test run.

Six years after Apple launched its video calling service, Google finally has an answer for FaceTime.

Duo mobile app spying