A Sneak Preview of Hangouts 4.0

Posted by on Hangouts
The fine folk over at Android Police have got their hands on an early build of the upcoming Hangouts 4.0 app for Android.

Most of us have yearned for a fully material design Hangouts update since the original guideline's announcement at Google I/O 2013. Although we got a somewhat half'n'half visual refresh last year with a green-tinted statusbar and navigation drawer, it still lacked Material Design's most popular component The FAB.

Hangouts 4.0 should be rolling out sometime in the near future (I know, you can't get more vague than that) which has the much-requested FAB for creating new conversations with contacts, as well as a needed cleanup to the user interface. This information comes from +Android Police who has managed to get a hold of an unfinished preview build. Of course, the UI and features may differ from the finished product whenever we'll see that. Now that's out of the way, let's get into the good stuff:
Coming soon: A Hangouts app complete with FAB
Tap the FAB for quick shortcuts to contacts and conversations
 You'll immediately notice the absence of tabs which were previously used for switching between contacts and conversations. Instead the FAB will be your friend in most instances, providing quick access shortcuts to your most frequently messaged contacts, as well as links to creating new conversations and video calls. This is already a massive step forward.
A cleaner look for conversations with quick access to emoji and more
The refreshed conversation view has bolder message bubbles, which look pretty nice. Your profile photo isn't displayed next to your sent text (at least in this build), but the people you are talking to will have theirs. Look to the bottom and you'll see buttons for inserting emoji, stickers, photos and location. In the latest stable build, you have to tap on a button to access these features.

Other things to look out for as an improved navigation drawer in which you can update your status, view your contacts, invites and the rest of the usual things you see in the current stable version. Unfortunately for those of you that are tablet owners, this preview build doesn't contain a tablet-optimised layout. Hopefully that will be fixed for final release...

For a thorough look at every nook and cranny, be sure to read Android Police's exclusive look at Hangouts 4.0.