At Google I/O this year, Google unsurprisingly launched its unified messaging services Hangouts. Users of the new service have quickly discovered two shortfalls – one, Hangouts doesn’t work on tablets just yet. The second, however, was that contrary to early rumours, Hangouts does not integrate SMS or MMS.
Dori Storbeck, Google+ Community Manager for Hangouts, has responded a number of times to a truly epic comment thread on G+ with statements, albeit unofficial, about the plans and future features of Hangouts, including the tablet and SMS complaints.
On the tablet front, Storbeck advises that the team behind Hangouts is aware of the lack of compatibility on this and is working on resolving the issue.
On SMS, the news is less concrete, but it appears that it is one of the most requested features for Hangouts (this should be a surprise for no one), and it appears to be under development. Storbeck may have let this slip a bit too soon, it seems, because the comment was quickly updated:
Have you tried Hangouts yet? Are you looking forward to the promised features? Let us know your thoughts and experiences in the comments below
Hangouts overwrote gTalk today… wow epic fail. interface is not intuitive and listed hundreds of people (i assume from emails) who I don’t talk to anymore and there was no option to removed them. Come on! all I want to do is talk to people who are on gtalk!
Totally agree, rolled back the update with just minutes inside the Hangouts application. You cannot even see who is on line, JB Talk was a nice app and it worked well. IMHO don’t fix what isnt broken.
Hmm… any particular reason they didn’t make it remove Plus Messenger at the same time??
Hangouts are pretty slick, in large groups the continually moving waves of updating status heads makes it a bit crazy… but love the fact that its finally mobile and browser.
SMS is bound to come, integrating aspects from Google Voice to the mix…unsure about MMS as they haven’t had much success with MMS being pushed out with Voice, though this can be supplemented with images etc.
Hangout loading on to my Nexus 7 tonight.
How come when I just updated hangouts it had a new permission required to read and send SMS, if it doesn’t read and send SMS?
That might just be for the verification text when you put your number in on first run.
I have it on my nexus 7. It must have been a slow roll out because I got it on my phone yesterday morning and said it was uncompatible for my nexus 7. Checked last night and it was available
Yep, it’s on my N7 now too and the Note 8 review unit I’m currently playing with.
Yeah mates have started asking me what happened to Talk 🙂 At least it’s not as integral as Market -> Play Store… where’s my Android Market gone? 😀
FWIW, Hangouts already exists for tablets; the iOS app is a universal app, and works and looks pretty nice on my iPad.