Apple to add group calling for FaceTime in iOS 11?

Israel has a burgeoning high tech industry, and several companies that were based inside the country ended up purchased by large U.S. tech firms. Google, for example, purchased crowdsourced navigation app Waze, and Apple's purchase of LinX resulted in the dual-camera setup on the back of the Apple iPhone 7 Plus. Apple has a group of engineers toiling in Israel, which is where a new rumor about FaceTime was born.

According to the rumor, FaceTime is getting a new feature in iOS 11, namely group calling. This will allow iOS users to stream live to groups in addition to the usual one-to-one connection. Since there are messaging apps like Skype and Facebook Messenger that already offer it, Apple needs to update FaceTime's capabilities to keep pace. The FaceTime camera last received an upgrade with 2015's Apple iPhone 6s and Apple iPhone 6s Plus. The camera was hiked to 5MP from the previous 1.2MP.

The additional group calling feature is just speculation for now, and we wouldn't be surprised to see the FaceTime camera also receive another upgrade. Considering that some top-shelf Android phones are sporting 16MP front-facing cameras (like the just unveiled HTC U Ultra), we wouldn't be surprised to see Apple upgrade the FaceTime hardware with an 8MP-12MP camera.

source: TheVerifyer (translated) via TechRadar