It’s Wednesday, so time for some updates. We’re starting things off with Hangouts getting an update. Hangouts is getting a pretty nice update today, first of all it should fix the battery drain which we’ve seen with the latest version that came out a few weeks ago. I know many of us have been suffering from that. What else is new is custom sounds and ringtones for conversations, which is a neat addition to the app. In order to change the custom ringtones or sounds, just head to the action overflow menu in the conversation and tap on “People & Options” and you’ll see the settings for changing the custom ringtones and custom sounds. So you can set a custom ringtone for individual conversations, which is neat.
The update is about 14.8MB in size and is available through Google Play right now, although it is a staged rollout. So if you don’t want to wait for the update to head to your device from Google Play, you can go ahead and sideload the app from the link at the bottom of this post. In order to sideload the app, just download the APK, place it on your device. Make sure that Unknown Sources is checked (Settings > Security), and then open the APK, tap on install and a few seconds later your Hangouts app will be upgraded. It’s just that easy.
With this update, I’m more interested in seeing the better battery life out of this update. At the time of writing this, Hangouts ate about 45% of my battery and I barely even used it. So hopefully that’s been fixed. How many of you have already installed the update for Hangouts? How are you liking the update so far? Be sure to let us know your thoughts on the update in the comments below.
Download: Hangouts v2.1.223