Snapchat really wants to be a phone. On Mar. 31, the social media app released Chat 2.0. This update includes several new features including live face chats, voice recording, and a variety of chat stickers. Snapchat stated in an article on News Every Day that their motive behind Chat 2.0 is to “emulate the best parts of face-to-face conversation.”

Now friends can video call each other through the app by tapping the video record icon in a chat log. But do not worry; if you cannot answer the phone because you do not look presentable or just do not feel like being seen, there are other options. The alternatives are to either watch the call without being viewed or be salty and ignore the call altogether.

The video quality of the calls is very low definition and looks too pixelated. Also, the video lags a bit. This could be a problem when you are trying to have a conversation and have to wait about three seconds for the person to understand what you said. People would be better off just sticking to FaceTime or Skype.

Tapping the phone button icon will allow you to call your friends to have a phone conversation. This feature is completely unnecessary because that is exactly what the phone is for, although, the phone speaker quality is much better than the video recording quality.

In addition, there are 35 new stickers that can be used in chat logs. They include a little rainbow, a flame with the word “fire!” under it, a wiener dog with the word “hot” inscribed on its back, and many more. The stickers are lame, painfully basic, and most people probably will not use them.

What is most annoying about Chat 2.0 is the Auto-Advance Feature. This feature makes it so that once the viewer has finished one friend’s Snapchat story, it will automatically move down to the next person’s on the timeline. This can be very annoying for those who just want to watch a select few of their friend’s Snapchat stories or are trying to avoid watching specific people’s stories. Even though it is a small flaw that is easy to fix by just swiping down out of the story, it is still inconvenient and annoying.

Snapchat is really doing too much. The new features do show that Snapchat has come a long way from where they started. However, most of the new features are completely unnecessary because they are basic applications on any phone. Instead of adding to the app, they just make it more complicated.