New Hangouts is in the Play Store

[Hobbs16]

I just dled Hangouts 2.0 from the play store that combines sms and hangouts. MMS works perfectly now through it for me, before I couldn't send or receive pics through sms in hangouts.

 

[suntracker]

Can you help me and explain what the hangouts thing is? When I want to send a text and I tap their name, it asks me whether I want to send the text via "Messaging" or "Hangouts". I know Hangouts is tied in some way to Google+, but nobody I know uses Google+, so would there be any reason to ever use Hangouts? Thanks!

 

[jbklein]

How did you get the latest 2.0 version installed on your G2? I've downloaded and installed it twice now and it still indicates version 1.2 that doesn't support SMS messaging.

Posted via Android Central App

 

[dcleveng]

I believe it's in the process of rolling out.

In other words, if you can't download the new version, it hasn't been rolled out to you (your google account) yet. I've been waiting for it too, but haven't got it yet.

 

[Hobbs16]

Can you help me and explain what the hangouts thing is? When I want to send a text and I tap their name, it asks me whether I want to send the text via "Messaging" or "Hangouts". I know Hangouts is tied in some way to Google+, but nobody I know uses Google+, so would there be any reason to ever use Hangouts? Thanks!

Hangouts is just Google's messageing app. It used to be called Google Talk (or gTalk). In the latest version they combined SMS into hangouts, so you can send someone a text through Hangouts the same as you would through Messaging. For me, I have a few friends that uses Hangouts but most don't but I it's one less App I need to have on my home screen, I can do both from the same app.

 

[Hobbs16]

How did you get the latest 2.0 version installed on your G2? I've downloaded and installed it twice now and it still indicates version 1.2 that doesn't support SMS messaging.

Posted via Android Central App

Not sure if it makes a difference, but I installed the APK of the new Hangouts to test it out, it wasn't sending MMS messages so I went to App Manager and installed all of the updates to Hangouts. When I told it to update Hangouts it then installed 2.0.

 

[HarvesterX?]

If you're having troubles installing it, find the version of Hangouts from the Nexus 5 dump (quick Google search will lead you to one of the many blog sites that posted all the Nexus 5 Google apps). Then from there go into Play Store and you should see an update to Hangouts there. The version from the Nexus 5 can do SMS but not MMS and I was quite happy seeing this update as I wasn't able to send MMS from any of my other Apps K was using until the update for some reason.