This is required so that you can add the items on the video. You know adding yourself a moustache. It requires a lot of calculations where to place the moustache, and the moustache can't be lagging.

The smartphones don't have this amazing ability, this is why it can run on slower phone systems.

*barely run on slower phone systems

I'm currently with a droidX and can barely run the hangout app, often end up force closing

Required for decoding and encoding video I assume. Who doesn't have that at this moment anyway?

What about smartphones ?

Those are not the droids we are looking for...

May be size matters.

What I've found in my amazing tests, that disabling the Hangouts widget on a G+ profile page will cut the memory use of that tab in half...

Maybe they should look into optimizing Hangouts instead of scaling up.