According to a rumor last year, Google would remove the ability to send SMS from Hangouts in a future update. While version 7.0 released today is not that update, it advises users to switch to Google Messenger for SMS. It also adds quick reply to notifications and the ability to add message shortcuts to the homescreen.
On Friday, we wrote about new audio and video calling feature possibly coming to Snapchat. Since then, the developer who discovered the code references in the Snapchat APK has gotten these features to work and posted screenshots. They reveal that Snapchat is working on a completely revamped version of chat, dubbed ‘ChatV2’.
Hangouts is widely criticized in the Android community for being slow and buggy. According to a rumor last week, SMS support is being stripped out of Hangouts in order to make the app a better chatting service. Perhaps on a related note, The Wall Street Journal is today reporting that Google has grander ambitions for the chat field and plans to infuse their artificial intelligence technology into it.
