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Google Hangouts and SMS Integration: A Mess, For Now
Android Headlines reports that a bug in the Google Hangouts app is causing confusion for users who would like to send and receive SMS messages. According to the article, [S]ome users are reporting an issue that is preventing the merging of SMS messages with Hangouts. The exact nature of what is causing this error is still unknown, as Google has not divulged any concrete information. They did state though that they are working on a fix and will have it ready for release as soon as they figure out what is going on.
On this front, I wish there were a good roadmap for all the overlapping and sometimes circular-seeming options for Google's various flavors of VoiP and messaging. Between Google Voice, Google Plus, Messenger (not Facebook's Messenger), Gmail, and now Google Fi, it's hard to tell quite where the there begins. After setting up a new phone through Google Fi, I find that the very pleasant full-screen text-message window I used to like with Google Voice is now one I can't figure out how to reach, and the screen directs me to use Hangouts instead.
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Call quality was so much better than skype, but it was a real pain to set up and use on android, and i don't even remember how to get to it on chrome.
Sorry google, if you want to compete, you have to bring your A-game, not 5 of your B-games.
-- Another senseless waste of fine bytes.
Google's on screen keyboard properly displays the case of characters based on the state of the shift key. Apple's keyboard is kind of an unpolished insult to the concept of literacy. There's plenty of stuff I don't like about Google's applications but none of it is as unforgivable as that.
-- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
After much haranguing and cajoling I made the mistake of "upgrading" my Google Voice to Hangouts on my desktop. Now I have to type the phone number each and every time I make a call. There isn't even a redial, the phone dialer box disappears after the call. I had some contacts in old Voice but those didn't get transferred over (hello?) There are instructions for how to go back to the old style, export the contacts and then import them into hangouts, but so far it hasn't worked, Back in the 1970's we had these things called error messages if some action failed. I guess that is old-fashioned now.
I have limited access to Hangouts, but is there a way to insert a carriage return into a message?
There's a little button for smileys. If you hit shift, the smiley button becomes a carriage return.
Also, how to remove the stupid fucking smilie face icon from the keyboard?
The keyboard isn't really part of Hangouts itself, and you can use an alternate keyboard. There are at least dozens of options available, and probably more. Swiftkey is fairly popular, I believe, but it has the same smiley icon (although it *does* show a carriage return as the long-press action for that button). I don't have any other keyboards installed at the moment to compare.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
I know there area lot of smart people at Google so the constant trainwreck that is Hangouts is baffling to me.
Never have I encountered a piece of chat software that is so confusing to so many people. I have been using chat software for a long time and am a tech-savvy person but I struggle understanding Hangouts. My relatives, who are scattered all over the world and are quite tech savvy, have been communicating amongst each other online for years with a variety of technologies from ICQ to MSN to Skype to GTalk, all struggle with Hangouts.
I know it's popular to bash UI/UX people on Slashdot and it's something I've never been comfortable with - UI/UX is an important part of software and I've worked with some phenomenal people. But it's like the Hangout team have decided to ignore all the previous years of the chat application design paradigms and have gone out of their way to overcomplicate the interfaces.
I am just perplexed at how hard it is to tell if people are online or offline in the Android app. The default views simply DO NOT SHOW this information - only a "last seen" timer. I assume this is intentional to try to make you just send messages anyway to get you using it like it's an SMS service, but fuck me if you want to actually have a chat with someone knowing whether they're online or away is important.
Some other specific gripes: /hate/ how hard it is to sign out of Hangouts on Android. You have to go into some obscure sub-menu. They clearly want it running all the time.
- I
- On one of the rare occasions I had it running on my phone yesterday, I sent a message to my partner (overseas from me atm) to see if she wanted a chat. My wifi dropped at the same time, and Hangouts reported the message wasn't sent; I had to go out so just left. But it WAS sent, and my partner sat around swearing at me for asking to chat and then vanishing.
- When someone tries to voice call me it seems to ring in Google Talk in Gmail, but does not always answer reliably. I note they are in the process of removing the old Google Talk from Gmail and replacing it with Hangouts.
- When trying to call someone from Google Talk in Gmail it does not seem to reliably call them.
- Message delivery seems flaky - it is not uncommon for me to find out messages never arrived. (Though this seems to be almost exclusively when one end of the conversation is in the Android app).
I would LOVE a good, simple, cross-platform chat application at the moment. My friends and relatives have fragmented across a billion platforms.
Google Voice, the service be it through a web browser, a dedicated app, or an embedded appliance was perfect circa three years ago. Since then, it seems the steering committees within Google have vacillated from not competing with carriers to competing with Skype/Lync, to being a dongle for android, and ultimately being a widget wedged up Hangouts ass in order to entice a migration and integration that doesn't work and sorely lacks the clear headed design objectives of the original. Once upon a time ago, one could manipulate GVoice with standard libraries and Python, one could buy a standard VOIP appliance and use it as a primary phone, and keep a history of every telecommunication with number portability in a web browser! It was awesome! Since then, its become a tepid mess of remembering where not to click to keep from flushing the entire kludge down the urethra of hangouts. Restore 3rd party app support, restore GVoice to the core functionality and greatness it once was, and quit breaking it!
Nothing evolves faster than the word of god in the minds of men who think themselves divinely inspired.
You are lucky that you didn't get the flipside, which is when it syncs a bunch of shit you don't want!
The Gmail account I use for phone sync is one I use at the shop for mostly dealing with companies, requests for RMAs, parts inquiries, stuff like that.....can you guess what the new Hangout/SMS did the first time my new smartphone sync'd up? If you said "overload your contacts with tons of worthless contacts" you are correct! All those "do not reply" addresses sending me RMA info, companies I hadn't dealt with in a couple years that I had one or two dealings with, its obvious they just scraped every single email address they possibly could from that account and dumped ALL that shit into my contact list! I ended up having to download a third party tool just to clean that shit out, immediately followed by me dumping Wangout (love that name, so apropos) for Go SMS.
The Google Fanboys can throw shit at me all they want, but I have been using Android since Donut and since going public Google has really gone downhill. Before they were like these cool crazy engineers just cooking up shit because "Hey this is something we'd like to have" and now it feels like its being run solely by MBAs standing in front of a powerpoint going "Our focus group says the crucial 18-35 demographic likes" followed by drivel somebody that reads Forbes would think kids like and it fucking stinks.
Lets hope Google gets their collective shit together or one of the alternatives (C'mon Cyanogen!) gets some real traction because right now I feel like the choices in smartphones are just trying to find the least amount of suck and frankly ALL of them have pretty high degrees of suck right out the gate.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
You know, the clock app on android, back in version 4 it worked fine. Came version 5 they changed the icons (arguably worse ones) made the background of the app change in color (I just woke up! give me a black background for gods sake) and introduced animations (to change the background from colorful to black and back again) which means I have to wait a couple seconds to put my alarm 30 minutes from now while ALL I WANT IS TO GET SOME MORE SLEEP.
Google bad UI decisions are literally making my day start in the wrong foot.
SMS messages, even though not technically secure, at least only go through the providers.. correct me if I am wrong. Why would someone want to add the Google layer, which ensures they will be scanned by more eyes?
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Because I prefer north up, so I use the map instead of navigation which does not have that option.
Thanks, but I'm not talking about chats - talking about SMS messages... How can Hangouts not have a search feature for your SMS messages??