Google Hangouts And Keyboard V2.0 Update Lands On The Play Store

Google Hangouts and Keyboard v2.0 update lands on the Play Store

BY Rajesh Pandey

Rajesh Pandey

Rajesh is a 26-year old freelance writer from Kolkata, India. He loves to tinker around with his Android devices and flash custom ROMs on them....

All Articles by Rajesh Pandey

Published 8 Nov 2013

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Google has rolled out the v2 update for two of its apps on the Play Store – Hangouts and Google Keyboard. The APKs of both the app were pulled from the Nexus 5 factory images earlier, but were buggy on other devices.

The much-awaited update for Hangouts brings SMS/MMS integration, location sharing support and animated GIFs support. The version on the Play Store is slightly newer than the one shipping with the Nexus 5, and fixes the crashing while on video chats among other things.

● SMS & MMS (Android 4.0+): Send/receive text messages with Hangouts! You can import your existing messages, quickly switch between SMS and Hangouts, and start group MMS conversations

● Animated GIFs: send animated GIFs, cute kittens and all

● Location: share a location in your conversations

● Device, in-call, mood status: share what device you’re on, whether you’re on a call, or your current mood

The update for Google Keyboard on the Play Store adds features similar to the one we have seen on the Nexus 5. This includes emojis support and the ability to swipe multiple words without lifting your finger. The swiping trail is now white in color, compared to the holo blue in the current version.

There is also a slight layout change in the new version, which might mess with your muscle memory.

• Rationalized punctuation across different sizes (4″,7″ and 10″)

• Inserted emoji entry point & layouts (KitKat or later

• Simplified mini-keyboard on full stop long press (revised long-press menus)

• De-blued press states

• Added space-aware gesture typing (you will not have to lift your finger while gesture typing – just go through the space bar)

As always, this is a phased roll out from Google so the updates might take up to a couple of days to show up on your Android device.