Today seems to be “update all the things” for Google. They’ve already started pushing out the Gmail update, and Google Voice was also updated. Now Hangouts is being updated to version 1.2. And as the title of this post states, it’s a pretty big update.
Here’s the full changelog:
- You can finally see who is on Hangouts! When you start a new Hangout, green icons show who’s on, and gray shows who’s not.
- Contacts are now organized by People you Hangout with, Suggested People, and Other Contacts.
- Long press contacts in the New Hangout screen to hide them.
- Invites are now above your conversations so they’re easier to find.
- Pinch-to-zoom photos!
These are definitely some welcomed features that we’ll be enjoying on our phones and tablets in the next few days. Yes, you guessed it, it’s another staged rollout. We don’t have the APK just yet, but if you’ve gotten the update, feel free to pull the APK and send it in. We’d love to share it with the rest of our readers.
It’s great to see things like, who is actually available to chat. Before we had to guess, and we weren’t always sure if someone was available or not. Which was one of the biggest complaints about Hangouts after Google I/O back in May. There’s also the fact that your contacts are now organized by the people you hangout with then suggested people then other contacts. Which is definitely helpful. For me, there’s only a few people I hangout with on a daily basis. Which is mostly Android Headlines staff members, as I’m sure you guessed. But it’s still nice to see it organized this way now.
Lots of great features in this update. I can’t wait to get the update on my devices and check it out.