WhatsApp Call Button Unresponsive – iOS 18.5, iPhone 16 Pro

Hi everyone,

We're experiencing an issue on a client device (iPhone 16 Pro, iOS 18.5) where WhatsApp calls often fail to start. Maybe someone here has seen this before and found a fix.

When tapping the call button in WhatsApp, the icon reacts visually, but no call is actually started.

Closing and reopening WhatsApp usually helps temporarily. Sometimes a full device restart is needed.

We have already checked the following:

iOS and WhatsApp are both up to date

iOS version is 18.5

WhatsApp version is 2.25.17.81

The same issue happened on the previous iPhone 15 Pro, which is why we switched to a 16 Pro

We reinstalled WhatsApp on the new phone

All permissions (like microphone) are correctly set

Screen Time is not blocking WhatsApp

Do Not Disturb and Focus are off

WhatsApp was added as an exception where possible

We reset the network settings

We are trying to avoid doing a clean install of WhatsApp without restoring the chat backup, because this would delete important conversations.

We also don’t want to switch to WhatsApp Business, because the user would appear as a company account.

Any ideas are very welcome. Thanks in advance!