Hangouts 4.0 for Android brings a cleaner UI, Better Android Wear Support

Hangouts 4.0 is finally rolling out on Google Play over the next few days, bringing with it a cleaner refresh of the user interface and the much-desired Android Wear support.

The once mythical beast that is Hangouts 4.0 has finally washed up on Google Play with plenty of eye candy and features to boot.

Material Friendly Design

A new look conversation view

A revised navigation menu makes it easier to access core Hangouts features

In October of last year (2014 for those reading from the far future), Google gave Hangouts a radical overhaul of its user interface - A slide-out navigation menu, a tabbed interface and a coating of dark green paint. This was a welcome update as the then-previous design was getting very long in the tooth, but the update didn't fully comply with Google's own Material Design guidelines. It was some sort of ugly hybrid of Holo (Google's old design language) and Material. It was almost awkward.

Fast forward over half a year later and we're finally treated with a user interface +Matias Duarte is probably proud of. All the necessities are in place - Coloured branding taken straight from Material Design's pallette, delightful animations and the FAB (Floating Action Button).

Chat quickly with the floating action button

With the addition of the FAB, you can start conversations with your favourite contacts in just a tap of the button. It's so handy, I don't know how I did without it for so long!

Simpler Attaching

A cleaner experience when attaching emoji, stickers, photos and your location

One of the most jarring experiences in previous versions of Hangouts is the cluttered and uninspired attachments interface. With 4.0, this has been revamped and simplified, plus it is now possible to share multiple photos at once. When attaching a photo, recently snapped pictures are shown within the Hangouts interface now, rather than taking you to a separate screen like in previous versions.

Don't give me hate, but I think Facebook Messenger still does a better job of it though...

Android Wear Support

The first generation Android Wear watches started trickling into stores in summer 2014, and the Hangouts solution was mediocre at best. But with 4.0, you can simply say "Ok Google, send a Hangouts message" into your watch and something will actually happen. Conversations can be caught up from the watch and my favourite little feature is the "send an emoji" button, because sending text is too much hard work.

Status Messages

Set your status in 140 characters or less

It's 2015, and Hangouts has finally reached feature parity with MSN Messenger, which had status support since the 90's. The length of a status message is the same as what you can fit in a tweet, which is 140 characters. Setting a status is as simple as sliding out the navigation menu and tapping on the button, and once set, the people who've added you will see it.

Outbound Caller ID

Another notable new feature in this release is Outbound Caller ID (at last) with Hangouts Dialer, meaning your friends and family won't get calls from "unknown". Good one, Google.

Hangouts 4.0 Issues

"We've been obsessively fixing bugs and speeding up message delivery to make Hangouts faster and more reliable."

Google claims in its announcement post that the new Hangouts is faster and sleeker, but during my testing the last couple of days, it has been anything but. Loading group conversations is a lot slower than in the 3.x series, and most of the time when I go to the conversation list, it obsessively reminds me which account I've signed into Hangouts from. There are a bunch of other little niggling slow-downs such as dialling a number from Hangouts Dialler and small animation stutters across the app.

But I'm sure most of these issues will be fixed in the next point release...

Download

Hangouts 4.0 for Android is rolling out on Google Play over the next few days, but if you're impatient like us, you want it now. Grab the APK from +APK Mirror below:

Not sure how to install an APK? Luckily our own +Gabriel Komarnicki wrote this handy guide.

Source and image: Google Blog