Google is beginning their famous staged rollout today, of a new update to Google Hangouts. This one is version 2.0.2. It doesn’t really introduce much of anything new. Although it appears to be squashing a handful of bugs which were introduced with the previous update which brought along support for SMS and MMS messages.
One of the major bugs that came with the last update was the fact that any text message sent to multiple people was converted to an MMS, which some people get charged extra for. Additionally, there was no way to disable that, until now. Down below, thanks to Android Police, you’ll see screens of Hangouts 2.0.1 and 2.0.2 side by side. You’ll notice there are a couple of new settings in there. One for “Import SMS” and another for “Group Messaging”. They’ve also added an option configure your APN settings, as previously Hangouts ignored your APN settings. So it’s nice to see that’s there.
Oh hey, we also have the APK for those interested. The update is signed by Google and will be upgrading your existing app. So if you have any issues, you can simply go into Settings > Apps > Hangouts, and tap on “Uninstall Updates”, and it’ll go back to the version of Hangouts shipped on your device. For those that are interested in the filename it is “com.google.android.talk_2.0.216(939144-30).apk”. It’s also a pretty hefty update. Weighing in at about 13.4MB in size. Remember that this is for Android 2.3 and above. So if you’re not at least running Gingerbread, this update won’t work on your device.
Download: Hangouts v2.0.2
As always, if you find other updates to the app, be sure to shout them out in the comments below and we’ll be sure to update this post with your findings. For those that decide to install the APK. Let us know how it works out for you in the comments below.