Android N has brought with it quite a few changes to various core aspects of the Android experience. One of those in particular is the way in which notifications are now received and handled. In particular, yesterday it was noted how multiple notifications from the same apps on Android N will be bundled together in the notification shade. The idea being to tidy up the notification shade, as well as still offering the ability to directly rely to the messages that come through as a notification.
As to be expected, with the developer preview now available, a number of apps will be updated to make use of these features and one which is already seeing its compatibility being updated is Hangouts. On the previous version of Hangouts (on Android N), any notifications bundled together would only allow for replying to the most recent message. With the latest version of Hangouts, you can now reply to any of the bundled messages directly from the notification. Not to mention, general improvements to the ability to reply from the notifications are included in the update as well. Although, in spite of this feature being noted, it is worth briefly pointing out that it seems to be inconsistent at the moment across devices with the Nexus 5X being an example of a device which is not seeing the ability to separate and respond to individual Hangouts messages just yet. It is also not clear if this is the case for all Nexus 5Xs or on a per-device level, although we can confirm that our Nexus 5X is not offering the feature after updating Hangouts.
Another interesting change worth noting, is that with the 8.0 version of Hangouts on Android N, images now come with rounded off corners. This was another aspect which was not present on the previous version of Hangouts on Android N, with the corners before being more corner-like and sharp. However, in the latest version, those corners are now more rounded off. Those interested in giving the latest Hangouts a try, can download the APK from the link below. Although, it is worth noting that none of these changes seem to be working for those running older than N versions of Android.