Hangouts has become a stable part of my electronic life over the last couple of years and its currently one of the few Google developed apps that doesn’t adhere to the Material Design standards that they set out. But it appears from a sneaky peek that Android Police have managed, that the material design update is in fact coming; potentially very soon.
Unless you’re not updating your apps regularly (shame on you if you’re not), you’re probably running version 3.3.94 which was a significant step forward from the version prior and from the look of things – Hangouts 4 is another massive leap forward starting with the missing element; Material Design.
There’s some neat little changes in the menus such as adding contacts into the slide out menus, the option to add emoji, pictures or take a photo on the spot in your conversation view and what appears to be a fairly impressive sticker collection that reminds me of other chat programs such as Telegram and Viber.
Aside from cosmetics; I’m hopeful that the sync and minor stability issues (which seems to be related to having multiple devices signed in) for Hangouts is resolved across the board. Personally I’d also like to see a quality stand alone app for Windows and Mac to make Hangouts as useful as some of the other cross platform messaging options that are available.
What do you see in the screenshots that gets you excited for the next Hangouts update to drop?
