Voice integration starts appearing in Hangouts

BY GreenBot Staff

Published 10 Sep 2014

Update: has officially announced Voice calls, text messages, voicemail for the Hangouts Android app, rolling out in the next few days. Free voice calling between Hangouts users is also coming to the app for iOS, Android the b. Original story continues below.

Voice Hangouts are continuing to merge, as some users can now receive voicemail send Voice text messages straight from the Hangouts app.

The new feature was spotted by Android lice Android Central, appears to have reached some users on an opt-in basis. Once enabled, Hangouts will stop sending messages from your SIM card’s phone number, will start using your Voice number instead. The Voice app website will stop receiving text messages entirely.

As Android lice points out, there’s currently no way to choose which phone number you’re using in Hangouts, so you shouldn’t enable this feature unless you’ve completely switched to Voice for all your calling needs.

Furthermore, Android Central notes that Hangouts can’t hle MMS messages from Voice just yet, users will still have to use the Voice app website to listen to text messages set up call routing. The fact that hasn’t made an official announcement about Hangouts integration suggests that the feature isn’t quite ready for primetime.

Still, the migration is a good sign for Voice users, who had been left in limbo as built out its Hangouts service. ile Voice users can currently place calls through the Hangouts app in Gmail, + Chrome, that feature hasn’t been extended to the mobile version of Hangouts yet. Voice’s deeper call routing voicemail management features haven’t made the leap to Hangouts at all. That’ll all have to change of intends to get rid of the stalone Voice service entirely, as rumored.