Hangouts 4.0 for Android brings Material Design, speedier messaging

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Published 10 Aug 2015

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has finally finished up a Material Design overhaul of Hangouts. The 4.0 update vastly improves the interface, adds more functionality to the floating action button, more deeply integrates the service with Android ar.

Ironically, a 4.0 update with a similar redesign for ’s instant messaging app already rolled out to iOS several weeks ago, which which might have made you question if your loyalty to Android was misplaced. 

hangouts roid 4.0 Official Blog

Android 4.0 incorporates many Material Design elements gets stronger ties to Android ar.

But as we suspected, it was because had more to work on with the Android edition, such as the ability to send MMS messages with your Hangouts number dictate a Hangouts message with your voice on Android ar.

The blog post that announced the update also highlighted a redesign for images, attachments, stickers, sharing your location. The new floating compose button also follows ’s Material Design aesthetic. en you press it, the button pops out with your most recent contacts several different ways to communicate (pictured).

hangouts 4.0

enty of options fly out from the new Hangouts compose button.

says the Hangouts team has been “obsessively fixing bugs” in order to make the app more responsive. The update is slowly rolling out to the ay Store, or you can grab it now from A Mirror.

The impact on you: This makes Hangouts a more viable option as an all-in-one messaging solution on Android. Too long it has lagged behind while other apps got the Material Design refresh, including the stock texting app Messenger. Hangouts also wasn’t very good with SMS MMS messages, which meant you needed to use your stock texting app or a third-party solution for SMS MMS.