Houseparty Android

The app that wants to revolutionize video calls

Houseparty's goal is to make voice and video calls a natural and spontaneous way of communicating with an Android smartphone. And it does so by using the hardware of smartphones that are already focused on multimedia functions and ever-faster Internet connections.

What is Houseparty?

Basically, it is an application for making group video calls between two or more users. It may seem similar to Skype, and indeed it is, but it is intended to be somewhat less rigid, and that is why they talk about video chat and the like. That is, this app has a very definite objective and it is none other than the Snapchat profile user: what is wanted is that communicating via video and voice becomes something as fast as sending a WhatsApp message.

Videoconferencing with the informal style of Snapchat or Periscope.

Main features

It has the following functions and outstanding features:

• Possibility to use the front or rear camera: thanks to this, we can show ourselves but also broadcast live to our contacts what is happening in front of us.
• Enable or disable notifications.
• Edit user profile.
• Lock the room so no one can access it, making that conversation private. This function is only available to the chat room administrator.
• Mute the microphone if you only want to retransmit an image.

To work, it uses the camera of your smartphone, either the front or the rear one (normally you will use the front one, the one for selfies). When the connection is established with a contact, the screen is split in two, and it is split into more parts depending on the contacts participating in the group conversation: you all see each other's faces and listen to what you say to each other.

The end of Houseparty

Epic Games, the current owner of this service since 2019, announced its closure in a statement claiming it was unable to give the community and the app the attention it deserved, and as of today, it no longer works. This decision also affects Houseparty's Fortnite mode that Epic integrated into its battle royale so users could stream their games in real-time through this platform.

However, the studio claims to be working on new ways to create social interactions adapted to the future metaverse, so we will have to wait and see what surprises us in the future.

Requirements and additional information:

• Minimum operating system requirements: Android 4.4.