Ever since it launched Android 5.0, Google has steadily been refreshing its Android apps with a Material Design to help them better fit into the new version of its mobile OS. Hangouts is one of those apps that’s been updated, but for whatever reason, it’s still not quite as Material as Google’s other apps. That’ll be changing soon.
Several images that claim to show Hangouts version 4.0 have been posted by the folks at Android Police. Hangouts v4.0 includes a number of tweaks, including a cleaner home screen with a floating action button. The Hangouts v4.0 update also lets you set a 140 character status for others to see.
When you jump into a conversation, you’ll see that the chat bubbles have been tweaked slightly, with the currently light green bubble becoming considerably darker. Google has also decided to remove both your avatar and timestamps from the chat screen. There’s also a new row of buttons for adding an emoji, photo, location, and more that’s replaced the paperclip in the current version.
One other detail that’s worth noting pertains to tablets. Unfortunately for folks that use Hangouts on tablets, version 4.0 of the app still doesn’t have a proper tablet user interface, meaning that you’re going to be seeing a lot of empty white space.
This new Hangouts v4.0 update looks really nice, cleaning up the old app’s UI and making it feel much more like a part of Lollipop and Google’s Material Design. Perhaps the one big downside is that there’s no tablet-friendly UI, but hey, maybe that’ll come in a future update.
As for this Hangouts version 4.0 update, there’s no word yet on when it might begin rolling out to all of us. Here’s to hoping that it’s soon, though, because I’m sure that Android users would love to have a better-looking version of an app that many of them probably use every day.
What do you think of this new-look Hangouts?
