LONDON – July 24, 2012 – Viber, the leading mobile communications platform offering free HD-quality phone calls and text and photo messages, today announced the release of Viber 2.2. The new version brings multiple new features and improvements to Viber users including group messaging, improved call quality and multiple user interface enhancements. The new version is being released simultaneously on iPhone and Android and the beta version of Viber for Blackberry has also been updated with the new text messaging features.

This is a feature packed release that brings many of the most requested features to Viber's growing community of users. Over 90 million users are making over 1.5 billion minutes of calls every month and sending over two billion text messages.

Viber now features a new HD voice engine to ensure the highest possible call quality across platforms with greater call stability.

Additionally, with the release of group messaging in Viber 2.2, the number of text messages sent through the free service is certain to increase rapidly. Viber has implemented several smart features into its messaging platform to ensure that the new group messaging experience is seamless, including:

  • A patent pending Smart notifications feature that avoids overwhelming you with new message alerts
  • A streamlined system for starting group messages
  • Background Images
  • Messages can include text, photos, and locations

"This release of Viber represents a significant opportunity for us to expand the ways our users can communicate with each other," said Talmon Marco, CEO of Viber. "Group messaging is an incredibly powerful feature because of how innately social it is – it really helps to bring people together and let them communicate. This is our goal, to empower conversations between people and to do it all for free."

The new version also brings multiple enhancements and new features to the Viber interface including the ability for users to share their name and photo. This should prove to be very useful during group messaging sessions where other users may not have all of the group members in their contact list.

Viber 2.2 for Android includes support for nine new languages with additional languages coming very soon for all Viber supported platforms. Supported languages include:

  • Arabic
  • Chinese (Simplified)
  • Chinese (Traditional
  • French
  • German
  • Hebrew
  • Portuguese (Portugal)
  • Russian
  • Spanish