How to enable WhatsApp voice calling on Android

The WhatApp Messenger team recently announced that they are working on enabling voice calling (over the internet) on their Android app. Because of the popularity of the WhatsApp, this would give customers a great way to communicate with one another.

While it may be awhile before the feature is officially available on Android, a developer on XDA has outlined a guide on how to get the coveted functionality working right now. In fact there are several methods available, but they all require that your device is rooted. If you have a rooted device, enabling the hidden voice calling code on WhatsApp will only take a few minutes. However, its important to note that enabling voice calls requires Android 5.0 Lollipop or higher.

How to enable WhatsApp voice calls on Android Lollipop or newer

Step 1 Download and install Root Browser or similar app capable of exploring the root of your device. You can find one on the Google Play Store. Open the app and navigate to data/data/com.whatsapp

Step 2 From inside the folder, navigate to shared_prefs and locate com.whatsapp_preferences.xml. Click to open it as a text file.

Step 3 Open the file using your favorite text editor (Root Browser has a built-in solution) and find the opening tag in the first portion of the code. Find the end of a string, and input the following code as shown (make sure it's before the closing tag

<boolean name="call" value="true" />
<string name="call_allowed">all</string>

Now save the file.

Step 4 You now need to force stop Whatsapp and restart it. You can do this by heading to Settings > Apps and scroll down, find and click on WhatsApp. Now click Force Stop.

That's it... When you open WhatsApp for Android, you should notice a new 'Calls' tab.

How to enable WhatsApp voice calls on Android KitKat and older

If you are running Android 4.4 KitKat or older, you will have to input a short command on a terminal emulator app.

su am start -n com.whatsapp/com.whatsapp.HomeActivity

Unfortunately, in order to use the Calls feature, you will need someone who has it activated to call you. The XDA member behind the hack, is taking requests if you need one. Once you receive the call, all you have to do is accept it for two minutes and hang up.


source - XDA Developers