Automatic sharing of photos and videos in HD arrives on WhatsApp, but it is not always the right choice: it has a strong impact on consumption and inflates backups
With its over 2 billion users worldwide, Whatsapp it is undoubtedly the most used app for share photos and videos with acquaintances, friends, relatives and even for work purposes. Since August last year, among other things, the chat platform developed by Meta has introduced the possibility of sending photos and videos in “HD quality“, limiting one of the main problems of sharing visual content in chats, namely that of low graphic quality.
Now, however, there is another new feature that will please many: it is no longer necessary to manually set the high quality for each photo or video shared, but it is possible to choose theAutomatic HD for each share. This is a great convenience, but it will have a big impact on the amount of data exchanged by the app and, above all, on backup of WhatsApp.
WhatsApp: how to activate automatic HD
To make sure that all photos and videos shared on WhatsApp are automatically sent in high quality just go to Settings > Storage & Data > Media Upload Quality.
Here we will find a switch to choose between Standard Quality And HD quality. The second option allows you to send files to higher resolution and, above all, with one much less compression (but still some compression remains).
It is right to specify that, if you want to send the photo or video at the resolution and at original qualitieswithout any compression, is still necessary send them as an attachment and not via the button with the camera icon.
It is also important to note that, even if we choose HD by default, it is always possible to send the individual content at standard quality: just tap the “HD” Before to complete the submission.
WhatsApp: pay attention to data consumption
When we choose HD quality, WhatsApp warns us of a detail that we should never underestimate: photos and videos in HD have a “weight” up to six times higher compared to equivalent standard quality files.
This means that it will take much longer to send and receive them, especially if they are HD videos, which much more data will be consumed from your phone plan (if you are not connected to WiFI), and that will take up much more space on your phone.
But, above all, HD files will weigh heavily on the WhatsApp backup which, we remind you, for some months now can no longer be hosted for free on Google Drive, but is counted by the Big G cloud service as a normal storage file.
WhatsApp in HD: is it worth it?
In light of all these limits and contraindicationsit is legitimate to ask yourself a question: is it worth activating automatic HD for photos and videos shared on WhatsApp?
Probably not, at least not always: there are some chats where the quality of the photos and videos sent is totally irrelevant, while there are certainly others where high quality is useful, if not even necessary.
The WhatsApp’s next steptherefore, could be to allow users to choose the default quality for each chat. In this way, in our opinion, the function would be perfect.
