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A comment on Say hello to Google Allo: a smarter messaging app. Parent comment

Re:Say hello to Google Allo: a smarter messaging app by piyush_soni on Wednesday September 21, 2016 @12:31AM (#12545404)
I'll use everything Google, but Duo has been the most stupid video chat app I've ever used. That's because in countries where the common household internet is still not that fast, it 'aggressively' pauses (completely removes) the video for long intervals in every few minutes citing slow connection. That's a frustrating experience. I generally get around 10-12 Mbps speed (which is on the higher side in India), and my family in another city have a 4 Mbps connection - it still pauses the video regularly when we talk - and eventually we switch to skype because it at least shows something, even if pixelated. I'm as disappointed by this 'feature' as excited I was before trying Duo.
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Re:Say hello to Google Allo: a smarter messaging app by 77ko on Wednesday September 21, 2016 @02:37AM (#12545906)
I'm having the same issue with Duo. it pauses the video frequently. I switched back to FB Messenger, which just works without pausing video.

Google had said something about Google Duo being bandwidth friendly and good for slow connections but FB Messenger is miles ahead, at least in my usage. Which left me quite disappointed with Duo, as I like the idea of using Duo over FB.

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Re:Say hello to Google Allo: a smarter messaging app by spacehunt on Wednesday September 21, 2016 @02:25AM (#12545860)
What's the uplink speed on the other end (presumably 4Mbps is downlink)? That would be a more limiting factor in the quality of the video you see on your end.

But then I recall we had working video chat a decade ago with only a few hundred Kbps...

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Re:Say hello to Google Allo: a smarter messaging app by spdionis on Wednesday September 21, 2016 @02:49AM (#12545947)
> But then I recall we had working video chat a decade ago with only a few hundred Kbps...

This! Even in appear.in, which is one of the most stable, I encounter connection problems almost daily.

Is it because all these new apps have to go through the browser stack?

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Re:Say hello to Google Allo: a smarter messaging app by AstralStorm on Wednesday September 21, 2016 @03:22AM (#12546055)
No, WebRTC and codecs do support low bitrates. Someone got lazy coding the client.
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Re:Say hello to Google Allo: a smarter messaging app by spdionis on Wednesday September 21, 2016 @03:28AM (#12546086)
Given that I don't know anything about this domain, in my experience "supports" doesn't necessarily mean "supports well" or "there is no technical reason the browser stack slows this down, it's only the client's fault" or "would have been much easier to support in another stack without going through all this shit".

So I'm still not convinced.

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Re:Say hello to Google Allo: a smarter messaging app by amaks on Wednesday September 21, 2016 @01:22AM (#12545619)
What's the latency of your connection? You can get 4 Mbps throughput (which is not a lot by itself, BTW), but the latency may be too high for a video chat.
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Re:Say hello to Google Allo: a smarter messaging app by piyush_soni on Wednesday September 21, 2016 @05:06AM (#12546559)
Yes, 4Mbps is not a lot, but since Skype shows something, Duo is effectively worse for me. I didn't measure the latency of my parents' connection. Will have to do it next time I'm there.
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Re:Say hello to Google Allo: a smarter messaging app by AstralStorm on Wednesday September 21, 2016 @03:24AM (#12546071)
People can live with a few seconds of latency on GSM. Chat is mostly half-duplex.

It is usually lack of bandwidth or major packet loss that cause trouble.

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