Telegram, the messaging platform, launched its most recent update on New Year’s Eve, boasting a brand-new calls interface and some colorful visual design, along with its biggest-ever bot update.

Latest Telegram update offers improved calls

Whilst best known for messaging, Telegram also features end-to-end encrypted voice and video calling. The recent update has redesigned the call interface, including dynamic backgrounds that change whether the call is ringing, active, or ended. Despite the new design having multiple animations, Telegram has stated the new interface uses fewer resources than the old one, draining less battery and improving performance on older devices.

Vaporize animation on message delete

A fun new addition to the app – whenever a user deletes a message they will experience what Telegram is calling a “Thanos Snap” animation – the message will pop and vaporize out of existence. This was introduced last month as a trial on iOS but has now rolled out across platforms.

Bot platform update

Telegram offers developers powerful tools to create integrated services from chatbots to mini-apps that can replace a website. Bot developers have been treated to the biggest bot tools update to date. It adds “dozens” of new features, including bot message reactions, managing reactions, quotes, and links, and sending replies to other chats.

A full list of new features and updates to Telegram’s bot platform can be found in the change log. The blog post announcing the update states that there are even more features included in this update but these won’t be announced until January.

There are thousands of bots available on the platform and they can do anything from gaming to ChatGPT integration. They are definitely worth looking into for some easy efficiencies, especially if you’re already a Telegram user.

The communication platform is used by over 800 million users monthly. It has raised over $1.2 billion in debt financing, including through bond sales, but is still not profitable.

Featured Image Credit: Graphic by Dima Solomin; Unsplash.

Ali Rees

Ali Rees is a freelance journalist and mature student based in Scotland.