Hangouts SMS option

[Adar]

Spoiler

Hi All,
Updated to the new version of Hangouts yesterday. Apparently Google wants this to be the new stock messaging app on it's phones. It asked if I wanted to use Hangouts for SMS, so I clicked yes and decided to give it a whirl. Has anybody else done this on the HTC One? Thoughts? Experience?

So far as I can tell, there are some major bugs. SMS works just fine, but MMS will not download at all. At least not after trying 4 or 5 times, after that I gave up. There is no option to have the incoming messages display on the lock screen, which I find annoying.

Would be interested to hear about others experiences. Especially regarding the incoming MMS. And, no, it's not a carrier issue. They flow through just fine on the stock messaging app. Which I will be going back to shortly if I can't get it figured out within Hangouts.

There is a thread over in the Applications forum talking about some of the things with Hangouts. As far as I can tell, MMS is "coming soon", although I saw some people saying it works for them. Possibly it IS carrier related. One of the problems I had with it was, it will not automatically split SMS messages that are more than 160 characters. Once you hit 160 characters, it just flat stops accepting anything you type until you send it. I use Sprint. People on AT&T and Verizon, it works perfectly fine. The stock SMS app on my phone happily splits my SMS messages for me. Google apparently has to get together with Sprint to make this feature work in Hangouts.

As far as the lock screen notifications, I honestly didn't even look at that in the short time I used it. Once I found it would not split my messages for me, I stopped using it until they update it to fix that issue.

Aside from that, I was pleasantly surprised with how much I liked using Hangouts. it is a HUGE improvement over what it used to be like. Once SMS splitting and MMS gets sorted out, I don't think I will have any problem switching to it entirely. I was afraid it was going to be a resource hog, which I suppose in comparison to the stock SMS app, it probably is. It didn't seem to impact my phone any though. Launched just as fast as the stock SMS, and was user-friendly enough to me.

 

[Dr Jones]

@Adar - Your experiences mirrors mine. I'm also on Sprint... so perhaps carrier is the issue. Assumed it was not since MMS works just fine on the stock HTC One messaging app.

Also noticed the 160 character limit immediately. Very annoying. At the same time, I've also been surprised with how much I liked the layout and some other features. That's why I haven't already killed it and gone back to the stock app.

I was able to have some success getting MMS to flow in if I turned on Mobile Data AND WiFi. Which, to me, makes no sense. If I'm ever in a location (like home) where I have continuous WiFi, I kill the Mobile Data antenna to preserve battery. Given that other text messages and calls roll in with no issue, Mobile Data should not be the problem. But... it's Sprint, so who knows.

Thanks for the feedback!