Google announced two new apps for contacting your friends and loved ones (yes, more messaging and video apps). This time, they’ve released what they call ‘Allo’ and ‘Duo’. I’m going to be focusing more on Duo today, but you can find out about Allo by checking out this article.

Duo is an app that lets you instantly video call anyone with a phone number that has the app. The app is tied to your phone number, and not a Google account. This will hopefully help bring in iOS users, but will it be useful? Will it actually rip them away from FaceTime to chat with their Android-using friends and family? I’m hoping I can make that argument for us Android users.

Google's 'Duo' Video App
Google’s ‘Duo’ Video App Preview

If you’re anything like me, I mostly use an Android device as my daily driver. I’d say about 90% of my time is using Android. When I’m not using iOS, I don’t get to use the features like FaceTime and iMessage. FaceTime is a big one, because I like talking to my brother who doesn’t live too near me, and I don’t get to see him as much as I’d like. So, naturally, Duo is a big win for me… I hope.

Getting my brother to use a totally different app besides Skype, Hangouts, etc. is going to be really hard. I barely managed to get him to install Hangouts, because there are so many other messaging apps that don’t require him to use his barely touched Google account. I love him, but he needs more Google in his life!

I think duo will do us both a lot of good, because it will allow us to Video chat in a cool and fast way. I’m really hoping that Duo will be as fast as Google shows it to be. I don’t have particularly fast wi-fi, so I’m really skeptical at the moment. I do love the feature of seeing the person while it’s actually ringing them. That should allow for some funny faces I can screenshot, the first time he uses it!

Duo's Pre-answer Preview Video
Duo’s Pre-Answer Video Feature

I want to know what you think about Duo, and if you think it will pull in iOS users at all. If not, let me know why in the comments. Also, let us know why you think it might actually cause a revolution. I’m still on the fence, but I’m really hoping it will. “Build it and they will come.” will hopefully be the way it works.

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