The 5 Best Alternatives To FaceTime For Android

If you’re not an iPhone owner but still want to get in on the smartphone action that’s totally okay! There are plenty of great Android phones to look forward to. But Apple’s experience in mobile software still gives them the edge in a number of areas, and video chatting is one of them. FaceTime, iOS’s native video app, is a solid program that has been polished to a shine, and it’s quickly becoming a generic verb like Xerox. You don’t video chat someone, you FaceTime them. With an Android phone, though, you can’t. That’s what’s great about the open marketplace of ideas that is the Google Play store, though. If you need an Android alternative to FaceTime, you have not one, but several, to choose from. We took the leading candidates for a test drive to compare them with each other, taking into account price, reliability, restrictions, and features. Here’s our list of the five best alternatives to FaceTime for Android.

The out-of-the-box alternative to FaceTime isn’t all that bad. Hangouts is Google’s service for both real-time text chat and video. One of the best things about it is that it’s massively cross-platform and linked to your Google ID. Not only does Hangouts work great on every Android phone, you can take it to your desktop — even your Mac desktop. ’s not talk about that) a few years back, and the team has refined it a lot since then. One thing that’s cool about Hangouts is that it works beyond simple person-to-person connections. The platform supports multiple-person conversations for up to ten people. Google also offers a mobile version for iOS. One advantage that Hangouts has over FaceTime is its data latency management. While Apple recommends only using FaceTime while connected to a wireless Internet connection, Hangouts deals much better with standard cellular data rates. In addition, voice calls to other Hangouts users are completely free. If you have an Android phone (five of which you should check out), you should also have a Google account — it’s the key to all of the company’s awesome services, including Hangouts.

Keeping your address book in order lets you merge all of your message streams into one easy-to-follow feed. The only complaint that we had is that there are occasionally unexplained glitches and bugs during calls, but they were rare. When you think about video chat services, Skype is the gray-haired grandfather that still manages to hang on. First released in 2003, the system shared a back end with music-sharing system Kazaa (remember music-sharing systems,). It grew steadily until 2011, when it was acquired by Microsoft to replace Windows Live Messenger. Obviously, that makes it the default messaging client for Windows phones, but the Android versions are quite solid. Early versions of Skype for Android weren’t well-integrated with your mobile device’s address book, making adding contacts a chore. In 2014, the 5.0 update finally brought it into harmony with the Android ecosystem, allowing it to access your existing contents. This simple change rocketed Skype into the upper echelon of Android video chat services. Skype’s video chat services work in a variety of bandwidth situations, and keeps a constant monitor of the quality of the call you are currently on.

You are able to score the call afterwards, and depending on what hardware you are using to make the video call, the video can be transmitted in HD. Basic Skype accounts are free and allow you unlimited one-on-one video chat across any supported platform — mobile and desktop alike. Skype used to charge a subscription fee for multi-user video chats, but now group chats are included in the basic service. They do still charge either by the minute or with a monthly subscription for calls to phone users outside of the Skype service. Viber started out as a text and audio messaging app, but quickly realized that they would need to add features to compete in a crowded marketplace. First they worked to replicate audio chat like Skype, and then in 2014 introduced video chat functionality. Although they are relatively new to the marketplace, Viber has build their brand into a strong alternative to existing platforms like FaceTime and Skype. One of the best aspects of Viber is the app’s clean and intuitive design.