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Hangout replaces Talk

Whats the G+ video chat called now? I remember that was called Hangout and the messanger was called Huddle. Google is gettin me :confused: lol

It's an interesting name choice. The app and the product are called "Hangouts". But you can still click "Hangout" in google+ to use "Hangouts" to "hangout" with someone. (And in a country where 99% of us add an "S" to Nordstrom for no reason.)

Personally, I would have preferred the code name.
 
It didn't force the update on me, gave me the option to update via the market. Seriously though? Should have stuck with gtalk lol

"if it ain't broke, don't fix it" :p

Luckily I backed up talk before updating :)
 
I must really be an old fart because I had no interest in using Talk and I still have no interest in updating to Hangouts. I have unlimited data (and texting) on Sprint and can text anyone with a smartphone (which is everyone I know). I don't have a front-facing camera. And I have no interest in group chatting. So is there any reason that I'd want to use Hangouts? It seems like the showstopper drawback is that I'd be limited only to Android users who actually use it AND whom I've added to my friends list.
 
It's appeared in my update list, but as my old Talk apk is 500kB, and this thing is > 11MB, and I have an old device, I've no intention of downloading it.
 
I must really be an old fart because I had no interest in using Talk and I still have no interest in updating to Hangouts. I have unlimited data (and texting) on Sprint and can text anyone with a smartphone (which is everyone I know). I don't have a front-facing camera. And I have no interest in group chatting. So is there any reason that I'd want to use Hangouts? It seems like the showstopper drawback is that I'd be limited only to Android users who actually use it AND whom I've added to my friends list.

No, it doesn't limit you only to android users. Anyone who has a google plus or google talk account can use it. And it sounds like they may be building SMS capability into it so you'd be able to communicate with users who don't have it.

That said, I hate the update - I liked the simplicity of google talk. It wasn't fancy, it just worked.

Now, my contact list is cluttered with people I don't know, don't know how they got in my contact list to begin with, or don't care to talk to.

So I guess it's time to do some spring cleaning of my google contacts.
 
How do I see which contacts are online in the new Hangouts app?
 
How do I see which contacts are online in the new Hangouts app?

A clear contact photo is basically equal to the green dot of the old google talk.

Faded either means away or offline.

Honestly, this is quite a dumb way to do it. It is hard to tell faded and not faded sometimes. Also, faded out can mean a few things I guess and I don't know which.
 
A clear contact photo is basically equal to the green dot of the old google talk.

Faded either means away or offline.

Honestly, this is quite a dumb way to do it. It is hard to tell faded and not faded sometimes. Also, faded out can mean a few things I guess and I don't know which.

And I guess people who are online are not grouped together?
 
If anyone is having trouble updating to the new Hangouts app, this is what I did. Go to the Play Store desktop site and install hangouts, when it downloads to your phone the old Talk app should be gone and completely replaced by Hangouts.

Also if you go to https://www.google.com/settings/account and look at the third option "SMS for Hangouts" you'll see that they are starting to roll out the SMS integration to some countries already. Not available in the U.S., Australia, U.K. and other major European markets yet.

Now where's my cookie?
 
Well, it appears that you still can't send SMS from Hangouts, but messages received while offline are received as SMS. Well its good enough for now. You can tell people to go online to chat.
 
For a chat client that was stubbornly rejecting features for years in the name of simplicity this is a puzzling move by Google to say the least. So now it's got all this whiz bang! GUI and I still can't share images and such like other chat clients? Lame. On top of that it b0rks my contacts list that has been perfect & exactly what I needed w/o unnecessary fluff for like 10years? Pass. Sure am glad I read the reviews and these threads before 'upgrading' and equally happy it wasn't forced upon me. This looks like the latest app update I will fight like grim death for as long as I can as it breaks something I've been using regularly for a long, long, LONG time.
 
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