Hangouts vs Google Voice vs Google Messenger?

[ajcook]

I've been using Hangouts as my messaging app for quite some time now. It's especially nice for messaging between my wife and me (she has an iPhone, meh). I like the message-read indication, I like that the other person's avatar indicates how far into the thread that they've read (especially nice in group chats of 3 or more), and the "someone's typing" indicator (the waving dots).

The latest version of Google Messenger seems to implement some of these as well.

Now, the I've just gotten the latest version of Google Voice, which also supports SMS (and now MMS) messaging.

The point is, there seems to be significant overlap across these three.

As I understand it, Google is expected to back off on Hangouts, molding it more into a business tool, not general consumer messaging tool.

I do like having all my messaging in a single app.

And, I assume Google will be getting RCA functionality into Messenger.

I'm trying to figure out which apps I should be using, and for what. Google Voice for my voice mail only? (And undo voice mail from Hangouts?). Messenger for everything else? (And abandon Hangouts entirely?)

I don't know if this adds a meaningful nuance or not, but I'm a Sprint user, and my Google Voice is the Sprint Google Voice account type. (My Google Voice phone number and my real phone number are the same).

I'm leaning toward Google Voice for voice mail, and Messenger for all other messaging, dropping Hangouts (I'll miss the Hangouts built-in stickers, though).

What are people's thoughts? (I'd love one of the Android Central columnists to do an analysis on this question.

 

[PhiPsi32]

I use Hangouts for everything, and I've enjoyed the experience since MMS support was added. The GV update was exciting news. After moving voice and SMS back to the GV app, I discovered a problem. You can't delete call history or SMS threads (you can delete individual messages). To do this you have to go to the GV website and select the legacy mode. This takes you to the OLD web page. You can delete and manage your messages from there. Very disappointing . . .

 

[chrisrach3]

I've always wondered why they don't merge all of them together. How cool of an app to be able to check voicemail, text, and video call all in the same app!

 

[Nilanjan Chaks]

They should merge the tree apps with segmented functionality n one single app. It is very difficult to open different apps for each function - which again overlaps.