If a new report is to be believed then Hangouts might lose a major feature in the near future, it’s claimed that the next update of Hangouts for Android is going to remove the ability to send and receive SMS/MMS messages. It did take some time for Hangouts to get proper messaging abilities and those who rely on it may not like to see this happen, and it may not, given that Google has not yet confirmed if it’s going to take this step with Hangouts.
Citing a trusted source familiar with the matter Phandroid reports that Hangouts is no longer going to have the ability to send and receive SMS/MMS messages once the next update arrives, without really giving the reason behind this move.
The scribe acknowledges that Google has addressed much of the issues that Hangouts users had with the messaging feature in the past, perhaps the company just wants to improve the core Hangouts experience by removing this feature, and since Android already supports third-party SMS apps it’s not like users won’t have any alternatives to choose from.
It’s also said that Google Voice users won’t lose their ability to message within Hangouts, Project Fi uses Google Voice to enable users to send and receive messages from their Android devices, but it’s only the Hangouts app that’s going to lose this functionality. No word as yet from Google as to whether or not this is true.