Hangouts has become a stable part of my electronic life over the last couple of years and its currently one of the few Google developed apps that doesn’t adhere to the Material Design standards that they set out. But it appears from a sneaky peek that Android Police have managed, that the material design update is in fact coming; potentially very soon.
Unless you’re not updating your apps regularly (shame on you if you’re not), you’re probably running version 3.3.94 which was a significant step forward from the version prior and from the look of things – Hangouts 4 is another massive leap forward starting with the missing element; Material Design.
There’s some neat little changes in the menus such as adding contacts into the slide out menus, the option to add emoji, pictures or take a photo on the spot in your conversation view and what appears to be a fairly impressive sticker collection that reminds me of other chat programs such as Telegram and Viber.
Aside from cosmetics; I’m hopeful that the sync and minor stability issues (which seems to be related to having multiple devices signed in) for Hangouts is resolved across the board. Personally I’d also like to see a quality stand alone app for Windows and Mac to make Hangouts as useful as some of the other cross platform messaging options that are available.
What do you see in the screenshots that gets you excited for the next Hangouts update to drop?
The ability to kick guests needs to be added. This is one of the major features that the other chat platforms have over Hangouts. Better catch up, guys.
Multiple sms recipients. This is the main reason I abandoned hangouts for Android in the first place. It would be awesome if they could also add the same functionality that Viber has – displaying my phone number when I make a regular call via the hangouts app. Now I’m forced to use Viber otherwise will no one pick up.
Multiple sms recipients has been available for a while now. I know it wasn’t for a period and it annoyed me too, but they added that functionality a few updates ago.
Whats the difference between Messenger and Hangouts?
Messenger is SMS only. Hangouts sends messages using the internet if the recipient can receive them, or sms. The internet based “hangout” message (as opposed to the sms format) is cloud based (see your history anywhere), rich (send pictures, location, or “stickers”), and can do group chats.
I’d like to see colour coded people threads like in the messenger app.
As Phil mentioned, I personally think google needs to fix notification sync issue across devices. I have noticed a couple of times that, when I get a hangout call all of my devices will ring together, even though I was using hangout on one of my devices.The most annoying part is, even if I receive a call on one device, other devices will continue to ring…
I think google should fix this issue…
What about short video messages like the iOS version has had for like a year or so? Any news on that? I also use Hangouts all the time with certain folks, but hate having to use a different program to send short videos to them.