WhatsApp is preparing an option to allow you to modify the quality of the photos and videos that you send in the application. The quality of the photos It can already be configured in WhatsApp Beta, with three available options and a generic explanation that does not make clear the differences between the different options.
If you have WhatsApp Beta and you wonder what is the difference between the various photo quality settings, we have made the comparison for you. Keep in mind, of course, that it is still a “beta” function, so that there could be changes between now and when it is activated for users of the stable version of WhatsApp.
Three options available
First of all, let’s see what quality options WhatsApp offers you. This configuration is already active in WhatsApp Beta, accessible from the section Storage and data WhatsApp settings.
In section File upload quality, for the moment it already appears Photo upload quality, although in the future the quality of videos will also be added. At this time there are three options available:
Automatic. Without further explanation, it is understood that this will be the default setting and that it should adjust the quality automatically.
Best Quality. It will give priority to the quality of the image, even if it takes up more space and therefore takes longer to send and uses more data.
Data saving. Send the image at a lower quality, saving data and with a faster delivery.
With gallery photos
To test how WhatsApp’s quality settings affect, we have started sending the same photo saved on the mobile with the different configurations. The advantage of using a photo from the gallery is that the shipment will be identical in all cases, so that it could be appreciated if there were small changes in compression.
However, the quality setting doesn’t seem to affect gallery photos, at least in its current situation. Photos are sent exactly the same size and occupy the exact same size regardless, without any change if you use Wi-Fi or data.
Although in the settings it is indicated that this quality setting applies to “multimedia files that you are going to send”, without specifying that they are only those that you take with the integrated WhatsApp camera, at the moment there is no change: they are sent rescaled at approximately 1 megapixel. Of course, remember that you can always send the photos to original quality using the old trick of sending them as documents.
With the WhatsApp camera
Although the configuration does not seem to affect the sending of photos from the mobile gallery, the thing changes if we send the photos directly with the integrated WhatsApp camera. In this case, there are obvious differences, beyond the small variations in size typical of being technically different photos.
The most obvious change is that photos in auto or power save quality have a resolution of around 1.5 megapixels, while photos sent at the high quality setting go up to 3.1 megapixels. The specific sizes depend on the aspect ratio, but for example we went from 1,056 x 1,408 pixels to 1,536 x 2,048 pixels. About twice the number of pixels.
The good news is that file size is still smallEven though it’s proportionally around 80% more in our tests, it’s still a few hundred kilobytes which generally shouldn’t be much of a problem.
The main difference is that the photos are resized to 1.5 MP in automatic or data saving quality and to 3.1 MP in high quality
The bad news is that automatic configuration is no different from saving data. While this setting would have been expected to change the quality of the delivery depending on whether we are using Wi-Fi or data, in our tests there has been no change.
Another detail is that the photos with the camera, even at “data saving” quality, are sent at 1.5 megapixels, while the photos from the gallery do it at 1 megapixel. This suggests that WhatsApp seems to be about to increase the resolution of the photos we send in chats. From 1 to 1.5 megapixels starting and 3.1 maximum.