Allo is ready for you to download in Australia! Just days after launching the app is now available to download on Google Play for those in Australia.
The app began rolling out on Wednesday afternoon with Allo co-lead developer Justin Uberti advising the rollout would begin in India before moving to other regions. The main concern was server capacity, but the rollout has apparently gone well with Australia now in line.
The app has been met with mixed reactions, with a number of people concerned over the perceived lack of features in the app such as multi-device support, SMS integration, desktop client and even message backup. Mr Uberti has been talking on Twitter about this perceived lack of features advising that ‘All-in-one apps are not the future’.
The current state of play for Allo is that it’s a version 1.0 release and more features are coming. Mr Uberti advised those looking for more features:
And a special 👍 to those who asked for a feature, but understood that Allo v1 is just that: a 1.0 product that will improve every few weeks.
— Justin Uberti (@juberti) September 22, 2016
We’ve used Allo here for a while now, and you can read my thoughts on the service here.
If you haven’t yet side-loaded the app, Allo then you can head to Google Play to download the app now.
I’m happy to see the Tweet ‘update every few weeks’. That puts them with Google Photo’s which sees continuous progress. I wish more Google apps were run this way.
Absolutely ridiculous. I really don’t see how this (yet another messaging app) fits into an already flooded market of messaging apps. It’s hard enough trying to get friends to switch to something like Telegram let alone this garbage that can only be used on one device.
Unless Google has some major plans for this app in the future and they are releasing it now to get some good feedback on the groundwork? Perhaps it’s a start to RCS.
No use for it what so ever in it’s current state though. Installed it. Played with. Went ‘meh’. Uninstalled it. 🙂
I think part of it is getting people to use the Assistant. Every time someone talks to the assistant it will have a bit more data which they can use to improve it.
Just got notified that it was ready for download. Installed it, and it thought that 9 of my contacts were already using it, and available for chatting. Umm, I don’t think so Allo.
Yeah as you found out this is supposed to be people who have a phone number associated with their Google account.
this is awesome I’ve WhatsApp, Messages, Hangouts, Duo, Facebook Messenger and Allo installed – all the bases covered – just need a bigger screen now to get the other apps on!!!!!!!
If you searched this in Google Play before it was available and it’s still showing as “pre-register”/”pre-registered” then in Setting go to Apps and clear Cache (under Storage) for both Google Play and Google Play Services… By the way this is applicable to any updates your mates have but you haven’t received yet.
Well, I gotta disagree with him that ‘all in one apps are not the future’. I think the more functionality one single messaging app has, the more propensity for usage. If Allo did Allo messages, SMS, could work across all platforms and became the default messaging app on Android, I’d argue that people would be more willing to use it. Messaging to another android user – get all the extra Allo features. Messaging to someone on iPhone who doesn’t have allo – falls back to SMS and doesn’t have the extra features. But what do I know, I’m just a… Read more »
Agreed Andrew!
“‘All-in-one apps are not the future’”
Nah, they are the present, at least if you aren’t google.
The future is all comms apps subsumed into the OS and ‘invisible’ so I can say “tell johnboy to get a hire car” and it gets the message there via whatever network. An ‘inter net’ if you will; you know, where it doesn’t matter what the network hardware is it just routes the message/call/video/VR presence.