Facebook Lite and Messenger Lite, are supposed to be the lighter versions of their siblings.
For Android users that are always running low on storage or experience lagging, those two apps should help them with that. Instead of ditching other apps they don't use often, the two Lites are pretty fast and occupy significant smaller storage space on their smartphones.
But here is the thing. those two apps don't do what their siblings can because they lack features.
Messenger Lite, for example, misses support for GIFs, photo stickers, games, mobile payments, and most of the things users will find in the full app. But with its small size that is just under 10MB, Facebook thinks that it has rooms to spare.
The social media has added video calling, just for the sake of it.
This feature works as intended. Users can just open a conversation or choose a contact to talk to, then tap on the video camera icon located at the top right corner of the screen, and they're good to go.
And while on the line, they can quickly switch from video call to audio call by just tapping on the designated icon.
Messenger Lite is an app designed for those users with low-end smartphones or those that frequently experience low storage space. While originally meant for emerging market, Facebook has made it available in more than 100 countries.
It's an alternative to the bulkier and more feature-packed original Messenger app, but Facebook has slowly added more features to the Lite app.
And with video calling, Facebook has made Messenger Lite a superior choice to the original for many people, since it has all of the same main methods of communication options but without the bloat.
Facebook said that video chat is popular for those use the Messenger app on the day to day basis.
Back in 2017, there were 17 billion video chats in Messenger compared to the previous year. And Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg has repeatedly said that the company wants to connect as many as people to the internet.