Telegram updates: Redesigned call interface, less battery use, colourful calls and Thanos Snap effect

Popular messaging app Telegram has rolled out some new intriguing updates. These include improved calls with a colourful new design that uses less of your phone’s battery. The update also includes animations - Telegram is calling it the Thanos Snap Effect that appears when you delete a message, and the largest bot update yet.

Improvements made to the calls feature include new animations, backgrounds that change based on the calls status: ringing, active or ended. The company said that the new interface requires fewer resources than before, which means it saves battery life and works better on older devices. The update also improves call quality. Improvements to connection and audio quality are expected to come in 2024.

The Thanos Snap Effect is a vaporise animation that has been introduced on both iOS as well as Android and plays when a message is deleted.

Telegram has also introduced a free bot platform that lets developers integrate any kind of service into the Telegram ecosystem – from simple chat bots to powerful mini apps that can replace any website. Through this update, bots can also get information about giveaways and boosts in channels where they are admins.

The launch of the update comes a month after Telegram announced improvements to channels, emoji customization for reactions and stats for stories in order to compete with WhatsApp in a much more efficient manner. WhatsApp launched its channels feature not too long ago, Telegram has had channels for a while but will still need to keep innovating to be able to compete with WhatsApp.

WhatsApp currently has over 2 billion monthly active users and Telegram has over 800 million monthly active users.