14 DAY TRIAL // Google has just announced that Hangouts for Android will receive a major update that will bring lots of new features and improvements. Details on the upcoming features leaked a few weeks ago, while others are completely new.
During a scheduled Google+ event, Vic Gundotra, senior vice president, Engineering for Google, confirmed that Hangouts would receive SMS integration, support for GIF files, as well location sharing.
“Hangouts for Android now supports location sharing and SMS. This way you can send a map of your current location (vs. finding and typing an address), and you can send and receive SMS (vs. switching between apps). Animated GIFs also play inline.”
Hangouts on Air and Hangouts video calls will also receive slight improvements that will bring additional features to users:
“Broadcasters can now schedule Hangouts On Air, then promote them with a dedicated watch page. Once you're live, Control Room lets you moderate the conversation with eject and remote mute.
“In both cases, the video calling experience is significantly improved. It's now full screen across mobile and desktop, and it fixes and enhances webcam lighting automatically.”
According to Google, the Android application and video calling features will be available “in a few days,” whereas Hangouts On Air enhancements will be rolled out over the next few weeks.
Google's announcement comes only a few days ahead of the alleged official unveiling of Android 4.4 KitKat platform and LG Nexus 5 device.
The search giant is expected to launch the next Nexus smartphone in the coming days, but we're still waiting for an official confirmation. The new Hangouts application for Android devices and the related apps are part of Google's plan to enter instant messaging market, which is currently dominated by powerful players such as WhatsApp and BlackBerry (BBM).
We don't have an exact release date for these changes, but we will keep an eye out for any details on the matter so stay tuned.
