News

Telegram Introduces Support For Group Video Calls & Many Other Features

The biggest limitation at the moment is the fact that group video calls are limited to the first 30 people who join a voice chat.

Published

5 years ago

June 29, 2021

Joanna Melki

telegram introduces support for group video calls and many other features

Telegram users have a good reason to celebrate because their favorite instant messaging software now supports group video calls.

To use the new feature, you need to first start a voice chat by tapping or clicking the hamburger menu in the profile of any group where you are an admin and selecting the Start Voice Chat option. From there, simply tap the camera icon to switch your video on.

“Tap on any video to make it full screen,” explains Telegram on its blog. “If you pin a video, it will stay focused as new users join the call and turn on their cameras.”

The Telegram app lets you seamlessly share your screen with others, and you don’t even have to turn off your camera feed. The screen sharing option can be accessed by clicking the hamburger menu icon during a group video call. The same menu is also where you can find the toggle for the improved noise suppression option.

Telegram

All in all, the group video calls feature seems to be polished and well-implemented, which isn’t all that surprising considering that Telegram first promised to release it by the end of last year, later extending the deadline to May.

The biggest limitation at the moment is the fact that group video calls are limited to the first 30 people who join a voice chat. Telegram is already working on increasing this limit, but we don’t know how long it will take.

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Other notable features introduced alongside group video calls include algorithmically generated animated backgrounds for chats, seamless message sending animations, login information reminders, new animated emoji, improved creation of new sticker packs, two new app icons on iOS, and better communication with bots.

Telegram currently has around 500 million users around the world, and new features such as these are guaranteed to make its user base grow even larger.

News

At I/O 2026, Sundar Pichai Concedes AI Must Deliver Real Value

Gemini 3.5, a personal agent called Spark, agentic shopping, and Android XR eyewear are all aimed at making AI feel useful, not just impressive.

Published

2 weeks ago

May 20, 2026

Nour Nasir

at io 2026 sundar pichai concedes ai must deliver real value

Google

Google’s annual I/O developer conference (I/O 2026) has recently become a status update on the same question: can the company turn its AI spending into products people use every day? This year, chief executive Sundar Pichai described Google as being in a phase of hyper progress, while conceding this is the part of the cycle where people want to see real value in the products they use on a day-to-day basis.

The strategy on display was to push agents — AI systems that act on a user’s behalf — into nearly every Google product at once. Search now has an “intelligent search box” that returns generated explainer videos alongside links. Gmail, Docs, YouTube and Maps are gaining their own agent layers, including a Docs Live feature that turns spoken instructions into drafted text with citations.

Two new models, Gemini 3.5 and a cheaper Gemini 3.5 Flash, arrived the same day. Google says 900 million people now use Gemini, and that more than 50 billion images have been generated with it. The pricing tier names are likely to confuse buyers: a new AI Ultra plan launches at $100 a month, while the older Gemini AI Ultra drops from $250 to $200.

The flashier announcements were Gemini Omni, a video generator pitched as a more realistic answer to OpenAI’s discontinued Sora 2, and Gemini Spark, a personal agent that handles recurring tasks across a user’s Google account. A new universal shopping cart lets agents complete purchases across multiple retailers from inside Google itself, placing the company between the merchant and the buyer, and also owning the checkout.

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Google also confirmed its Android XR eyewear, built with Samsung and frames from Warby Parker and Gentle Monster. Audio-only glasses ship this autumn; a display-equipped version, which would superimpose live translations into the wearer’s field of view, is still in development. Both sets translate, however only the display version shows you the result.

What Pichai did not resolve is the bargain underneath all this. An agent is only useful to the degree it knows your calendar, your inbox, your shopping history and your physical surroundings. Google has now confirmed that, in time, the same context may carry advertising.