Anyone who has taken a WhatsApp call on a Dhaka bus knows the ritual: “Hello? Hello? Say again?” while a horn, a conductor and forty other conversations compete for the microphone. WhatsApp is adding noise cancellation to its voice and video calls, and if it works as described, it is one of the more useful features the app has shipped in years for people who do not take calls from quiet offices.
What is known
WABetaInfo reports that the option has already appeared for users on Android beta version 2.26.14.1, inside the calling menu. It switches on automatically when you start an audio or video call and can be turned off if you prefer. WhatsApp is expected to announce a wider rollout within a few weeks. Gadgets 360 first reported the details.
How it works — and the catch
The processing runs on your phone, on your outgoing audio. Software models trained on speech isolate the voice band and suppress everything else — engine drone, wind, chatter, the ceiling fan — before the audio is sent. The result is that the other person hears you more clearly. That is also the limitation: it does nothing for what you hear. If your caller is standing in a market and has not enabled the feature (or is on an app version without it), their noise still reaches you. Both sides have to have it on for a two-way improvement, which is why the default-on choice matters.
Why this is late, and why it matters here
Google Meet, Zoom and Microsoft Teams have offered noise suppression since the pandemic, and phone makers bundle it into their dialers. WhatsApp calls, however, are the way a large share of Bangladeshis talk to family abroad and to customers at home, often from exactly the environments this is designed for. For a migrant worker calling from a construction site, or a small trader taking orders from a shop on a main road, the feature changes whether the call is usable at all.
What to expect
- Slightly higher battery use during calls, since the filtering runs on-device.
- Music and singing may sound muffled to the other party — the model treats them as noise. Turn the switch off for those calls.
- Older or low-end Android phones may get the feature later, or with lighter processing, depending on what the hardware can handle.
