WhatsApp, the Facebook-owned messaging service, has had a couple of hard months, from users migrating to safer alternatives like Telegram and Signal due to the company's new privacy policy, which in itself has been under immense criticism to more recent developments where it announced that users who fail to accept these terms would be subject to limited use of the platform.
More recently, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology or MeitY seems adamant about changing its stance, asking WhatsApp to withdraw its new policy as the manner of introducing the change undermines certain values of informational privacy, data security and the choices of the user.
Prior to this, the alternatives to WhatsApp had seen major growth, with an overall increase of 1200% due to the Facebook-owned company's controversial step. It seems that the messaging service is trying to divert its focus from these issues, as it seems it is working on transferring chat history between Android and iOS devices, a key feature to most.
WhatsApp Is Working On A Way To Allow iOS-Android Chat Transfer
As per a recent report by WABetaInfo, WhatsApp has been working on transferring chat history between Android and iOS. The new feature is currently in its beta phase and is being tested on the messaging service's Android and iOS applications.
For those of you unaware, as of now, if a user moves to another platform, they can back their WhatsApp chats up to Google Drive for Android and iCloud for Apple. These are limitations since the user is required to stick to the same platform and phone number to retrieve their prior data and chats when switching to a new device.
What this new feature will do is basically allow for enhanced flexibility for chat backup when it comes to different platforms, making it easier for a user who is shifting to an iOS-based device from his age-old Android phone.
Another chat migration tool in the works is that of transferring your chat history to another phone number. This will be a major step forward since there is no alternative as of now to migrate your data to another phone number in the instance that your SIM is broken or your number is compromised, and you need to shift to a new phone number.
Do note that, as of now, there are no hints or rumours around when the new chat migration tool will be released, but, from the looks of it, the day when users will easily be able to migrate their data is not far.