Google Duo video calling app now available in South Africa

Google’s new video calling app, Google Duo, is now officially available on the Play Store in South Africa.

Google Duo was announced earlier this year at the company’s I/O 2016 conference in California, where it’s companion chat app Allo was also unveiled.

Duo allows users to place video calls to other users in similar vein to Apple’s Facetime app. Duo also ties to phone numbers, which means users don’t necessarily need a Google account to use the service. Calls are also encrypted from end-to-end, and to further set it apart from other chat apps, it has a “Knock Knock” feature, which allows the call receiver to see live video of the caller before answering

On Gearburn: Google I/O 2016: Allo and Duo apps revealed

Duo uses both wireless networks and cellular networks (but your can switch the latter off), but according to Google, traffic delivery’s optimised for 2G and slower networks.

Google Duo is now live in South Africa and can be found over on the Google Play Store. The app’s also available on iOS.

There’s still no word on when Google Allo will arrive on the Play Store.