T-Mobile today introduced Video Calling, its effort to simplify making video calls on your smartphone by building the feature right into your phone’s dialer. When you’re ready to make a call, you can dial the phone number you want to reach and then press the voice call or video call button. Your contacts will also include a camera icon if they can accept a video call. If they can’t, that button will be grayed out.
T-Mobile’s Video Calling can work over LTE (using your high-speed data bucket) and Wi-Fi connections, and it can switch between the two if you’re moving during your call. If you end up leaving an LTE or Wi-Fi connection, the video call will automatically become a regular voice call. And if you end up moving back to an LTE or Wi-Fi connection, you can tap one button to switch back to a video call.
T-Mobile Video Calling is launching today on the Galaxy Note 5 and Galaxy S6 edge+. If you’ve got either device, you’ll get an update today to enable the feature. T-Mo says that the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 edge will get updates to enable Video Calling next week, and three more devices will get the feature before the end of 2015.
Video calling isn’t exactly a new feature for mobile, but usually both you and the recipient need a special app to conduct a video call. T-Mobile wants to eliminate that requirement and simplify the video calling process by building the feature directly into the device’s dialer. Obviously you’ll need Video Calling-compatible phone to actually use the feature, but if you do, making video calls should be a simpler process.
It’s also worth noting that T-Mo says that it’s “working with others so you can eventually enjoy built-in video calling across wireless networks.”