Standalone Google Hangouts App Launches For iOS Devices
by Brent Dirks
May 15, 2013
As part of its new unified chat platform Google has just released a standalone Hangouts app in the App Store.
Announced at the Google I/O conference, the new service will eventually replace all of the company’s communication properties. Along with iOS, there will be an app for Android devices and a Chrome Web extension.
Our own Dom Esposito has already done a quick look at the new app. Click here if you can't see the video.
Here are the complete release notes:
Hangouts brings one-on-one and group conversations to life with photos, emoji, and video calls for free. Connect with friends across computers, phones and tablets. -- Group conversations are better than ever. Send photos or emoji, see when people are engaged in the Hangout and message friends anytime, even if they're not connected right now. -- Video calls make Hangouts more fun. Turn any conversation into a video call with up to 10 friends. -- All your friends can use Hangouts. Hangouts works on computers, phones, and tablets, so you can connect with everyone. More Hangouts awesomeness: -- View and continue your Hangouts across devices. -- Get notifications just once. After you see an alert, it’ll be removed on other devices. -- Snooze your notifications if you’d prefer to respond later. -- See what you talked about in the past, including shared photos and your video call history. -- Keep a record of any Hangout for just a short period of time by turning history off. -- View collections of photos shared from each of your Hangouts. -- Choose from over 850 emoji to express what’s on your mind.Hangouts is a universal app for the iPhone/iPod touch and iPad/iPad mini. It can be downloaded in the App Store now for free. I’m actually excited to use Hangouts on my iOS devices. While I’ve never used it previously, I think the cross-platform integration strategy sounds great. It could easily become what FaceTime and iMessages should have been. [gallery link="file"]
