If you’re not an iPhone owner, but still want to get in on the smartphone action, that’s totally okay! There are plenty of great Android phones. That said, Apple’s experience in mobile software gives the company the edge in a number of areas, and video chatting is one of them. FaceTime, iOS’s native video app, is a solid program that has been polished to a shine, and it’s quickly becoming a generic verb like Xerox. You don’t video chat someone, you FaceTime them. With an Android phone, though, you can’t. So what, in this social-distancing era, can Android users do?
That’s what’s great about the open marketplace of ideas that is the Google Play store. If you need an Android alternative to FaceTime, you have not one, but several, to choose from. We took the leading candidates for a test drive to compare them with each other, taking into account price, reliability, restrictions, and features.
Developers are constantly improving the experience, too, so you can expect the apps in this feature to see new services and better stability the longer they’re offered. While it’s easy to just stick with Hangouts, there’s certainly a lot to be gained from experimenting with other Android FaceTime alternatives, depending on what friends and co-workers are using. We unreservedly recommend the five apps on this list. For more full-featured tools for businesses, you should check out our roundup of the best video conferencing software.
