WhatsApp and its new feature to start a chat without having saved a contact number
The application’s search engine changes to find the phone number outside the cell phone registry
A new WhatsApp feature will allow users to find a phone number outside their cell phone registry and start a direct conversation without having to save it as a contact in their address book. In this way, only the desired numbers will be stored.
This feature would solve one of the most common inconveniences when starting a conversation with someone, which would be the need to store their contact information, update the WhatsApp registry, search for them in the application and then send direct messages.
With this WhatsApp update, you will avoid storing the contact of a person with whom you will barely talk to once or in very eventual cases. Instead of taking up space in the internal memory of the cell phone, you only have to enter the number of the other user in the search engine.
To use the new WhatsApp feature, users must follow these steps:
– Open the WhatsApp application.
– Press the contact record button located at the bottom right of the screen.
– Select the search button located in the upper right part of the screen, which is presented with a magnifying glass icon.
– In the search engine, enter the number of the unknown contact with whom you want to start a conversation. This must include the country code (+51, +52, +53, etc.) and in the case of Android devices the new number must be entered using the numeric keypad (to change the type of keypad you must use the button located at the top right of the screen, otherwise the function will not be activated).
– Only if the contact is in WhatsApp, it will be possible to start a conversation with him/her after pressing the “Chat” button.
WhatsApp will allow you to start chats with unknown numbers without having them saved as contacts. (WABetaInfo)
In the case of iOS devices, entering the contact’s phone number in the search engine will generate the start of a search in which the message “Searching outside your contacts” will be displayed and it should not take too many seconds to show if the number corresponds to an active user on the platform.
Another benefit of this new feature corresponds to privacy: if the contact with whom you are going to chat has the phone number stored in your record, you will be able to see the profile picture, know at what times you are online and even access WhatsApp statuses. By not having the need to store a number you can avoid this type of exposure.
The function is already active for cell phones with Android and iOS operating systems and the only requirement is that users must have the most recent version of the application installed. To determine if this is the case, it would only be necessary to test if the function is active.
If the new WhatsApp feature is not accessible, this could mean one of these situations: the version of the application is not the most recent or the feature has not yet arrived in the user’s region/country.
In this case, it will be necessary to search for “WhatsApp” in the mobile application store and verify that the “Update” option does not appear under the platform name. If it does appear, then you should click on it and wait for the update to finish downloading and installing before trying again to see if the new function is enabled.
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