Rumor suggests Hangouts could be losing SMS/MMS functionality

BY Evan Selleck

Published 16 Dec 2015

image Hangouts MD

Ever since Google rolled out versions 2.0 of Hangouts, the application has carried with it support for standard text messaging and sending multimedia messages, too, to a contact’s phone number. That could be coming to an end, though.

According to a report recently published by Phandroid, and citing an internal build of Hangouts, the application is losing one of its more promising features. The internal build, which is said to be planned for a public release at some point in the future, no longer supports standard SMS or MMS, at least not to numbers attached to a wireless carrier.

Specifically, that means that Google’s own text and multimedia messages from the likes of Google Voice and Google’s Fi service will still work. You just won’t be able to text someone’s phone number that’s attached to AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, or any of the other carrier numbers if this rumor pans out.

Google has another text/media messaging app called Messenger, and it’s legitimately a good app with plenty of features to speak of, and more surely coming down the pipe. Sounds like that will have to be the go-to source for texts in the future for Android users.

Do you use Messenger, or are you a Hangouts user for text messages?

[via Phandroid]