Hangouts for Android gets video messages two years after iOS, drops merged SMS conversations

[Jos]

Hangouts on iOS has supported video messaging for a while now -- since February 2014 actually -- and today Google is finally bringing the feature to its own platform. The update has just started rolling out on Google Play and will allow Hangouts users on Android to record or upload up to a minute of footage to sent to their contacts.

Despite being uncharacteristically left out in the cold by Google for a couple of years, Hangouts users on Android at least get the upper hand in video quality, for now -- the Handouts Android app supports 1080p videos whereas on iOS it’s limited to 360p. Then again iOS users can upload up to 2 minute videos -- whats’ with the fragmentation Google?

The update also brings the ability for anyone to remove others from group Hangouts, and drops merged SMS/Hangouts conversations -- Google cited low usage and confusion and the reason behind removing this. You can still send SMS in Hangouts v11 but you’ll see a separate thread for Hangouts, SMS, and Google Voice SMS.

The update should arrive on your Android device via the Google Play Store soon, but the APK file is already doing the rounds online if you want to side load it.

Header image credit: Phandroid

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https://www.techspot.com/news/65567-hangouts-android-gets-video-messages-two-years-after.html

 

[Moneyd623]

Deal breaker on the losing merged conversations. Guess I wont be updating again, ever. I wonder why they bothered to remove it, seeing as it's an optional check box that's buried in settings menu's anyways. Plus it's off by default. Just leave it in and forget about it.

 

[Camikazi]

Deal breaker on the losing merged conversations. Guess I wont be updating again, ever. I wonder why they bothered to remove it, seeing as it's an optional check box that's buried in settings menu's anyways. Plus it's off by default. Just leave it in and forget about it.

I agree, a check box to NOT upset the ones who did use it would have been awesome, hell they could even have made it default to unmerged (just like it is now) and give the option to merge them (just like it is now). Honestly, I don't see why they spent time getting rid of an option that was defaulted to off and could be changed at any time already. Seems they spent a lot of useless dev time to do something that will do nothing but upset the ones who do use it (like me) and will make 0 difference to the ones who don't use it.

 

[Zenodroid]

Hangouts ? isnt that the first app we deactivate ?

 

[Camikazi]

Hangouts ? isnt that the first app we deactivate ?

It's the first app I, and many others, setup first. I don't know what "we" do but that is not what I do.

 

[Zenodroid]

Hangouts ? isnt that the first app we deactivate ?

It's the first app I, and many others, setup first. I don't know what "we" do but that is not what I do.

in europe we use whatsapp or messenger instead of hangouts. we do as like a newly formated pc. disable UAC.