Google Hangouts will remain to be one of the best applications that Google has ever released with respect to instant messaging.
The tech giant, upon releasing the new Google Pixel and Pixel XL, confirmed that the Hangouts app will no longer be coming as a default app on future Android devices. Instead, users will have to manually download and install it from the Google Play Store if they feel like using it. In its place, buyers of Android phones will instead come across the new Google Duo, an app that is meant for video and voice calling services.
If you want to send instant messages to friends, you need to download the Google Allo app, another new app that also came alongside the Duo app. These two are here to take the place of one app – Google Hangouts. With this in mind, you can definitely see how powerful this Hangouts app is – that it needs two other apps in order to fulfill what it could do.
In fact, it’s three apps that Google has introduced in place of the Hangouts app, including Google Messages. One thing that made Google Hangouts such a powerful application was that users could not only send instant messages and make voice and video calls, but they could also use it to send and receive SMS messages instead of default SMS apps that come with phones. This made the app more fun as every other communication need was centralized, making life a lot easier.
Now, today, Google Hangouts no longer supports SMS integration, unless you are a Google Project Fi user, a service that is limited to the U.S. market. This means that those who aren’t on Fi must get used to Google Messages or any other SMS app of their choice.
While Google is adamant that Allo and Duo will finally replace Hangouts on mobile phones, it will take more than instant messaging, Google Assistant and voice/video calls to achieve this. At some point, the search engine giant claimed that one of these two apps – Allo and Duo – will eventually cannibalize the other depending on which one performs better in the market.
Recently Allo was updated with support for video calls, where one can initiate a Duo call from within the Allo app. This is a sign that Allo is the one seeing more success and could soon take over the services of Duo. But if Google really wants this app to completely replace Hangouts, SMS integration could turn out to be an inevitable feature, especially since people don’t want to jam their phones with an app for each service.
What do you think? Let us know in your comments below.
A thousand times, yes.
Won’t use Allo only because it lacks SMS. I tried to use it, but couldn’t get my friends to switch.