I prefer NOT to have it take over SMS messaging because I want to know that the person will receive the message. If I wanted to get in touch with you, there is a conscious decision as to whether I instant message you, ring you, video call you, send an SMS, visit you in person or send you a letter. This shouldn't be removed or hidden - the reliability of the transport medium is important!

Half of my contacts never get messages from me in Hangouts. This makes it unreliable, and therefore useless.

Additionally, if I video call someone (eg my wife sat the other side of the room), Hangouts informs me that she is not available for a video call. But she has zero notifications or alerts or ringing or ANYTHING.

The inability to see if someone is online/offline also makes it useless. If I am having a conversation with someone sat next to me, I would like to know if they're sat next to me else I'll be talking to a wall. Chatting with people on Hangouts is like talking to a wall.

It truly is bad.

EDIT: I noticed the INSTANT downvote after writing this. Are you disagreeing with me on Hangouts or something? Or are you saying that I made all of this up or something? Hangouts does not work for me, full stop. I have used Android since 1.5 and Talk was far superior. The lack of proper UI (screen-width listview for contacts????) and behaviour on Hangouts (I am using a tablet) does not encourage decent applications. Compare the quality of Hangouts to GMail on a tablet for reference.

Not disagreeing with your experiences (because they're yours, not mine) but I've been pretty happy with Hangouts. I default to Hangouts because most everyone I chat with has it installed and it performs better (for me) than SMS/MMS which can be slow, limited, and compress the hell out of attached media.

But if someone doesn't use it, or isn't online, I can just tap the little voice bubble icon (mobile version) on the bottom of the chat where you type in your message and it lets you switch to SMS and back.

Also that is weird that you don't see people as online/offline. Mine (again, mobile version) shows the person with a green voice bubble if they are online or a grey one if they aren't. It shows the last time they were seen and inside the chat, it shows their little avatar/icon below the last message they read.

I can certainly understand wanting to use a different SMS client (which I'm pretty sure you can do easily) and being able to choose different default apps is one of the things I like about Android in general. I haven't used it on a tablet since I broke my Nexus 7 but from what I've seen in the web version and the phone version (both iOS and Android), it's gotten much better since the initial move from Talk to Hangouts.

Weird, I've found hangouts to be nothing but great with no missing messages.. however i (and pretty much everyone i talk to) just use it on iOS/chrome and not tied into sms like iMessage. The only issue I've had is it tends to chow through my battery.

When i was playing around with an andriod you could choose to have it take over sms or not, is that no longer an option?

> When i was playing around with an andriod you could choose to have it take over sms or not, is that no longer an option?

No it's still an option. They just didn't bother to look for it, or don't realise that they may not have the phone number and Google profile of their contacts synced...

But yes, if the person you're messaging has a phone number and Hangouts profile, and those are applied to the same contact, you can choose to SMS them or send a Hangouts message.

I have it disabled for SMS messages. I am not so much complaining that it offers SMS tie-in, more that it is unreliable in its transportation, so knowing how you're sending a message is more important if you want the person to receive it.

The problem exists for iPhone users as well I think - Messages will send via SMS or Internet and there is confusion amongst my relatives with regard to it. They don't know if they've sent an SMS or if it's gone via the Internet, so I won't get messages on my Mac/iPad because it's gone via SMS etc. etc.

Muddying the method of communication is a disservice.

I've had an issue where messages will appear out of order, or the end user won't get it at the time, but then it will just randomly pop into the conversation like 20 minutes later

The problem is you don't even try to make hangouts work for you. You complain that you can't even choose between SMS and instant chat, yet hangouts offers that effortlessly. And you ca see someone online/offline, you can even see exactly the last time they opened the app.

It's fine to not like Hangouts, but your complaints are just plain false.

I do try and make Hangouts work for me. I ring my brother using Chrome on my Mac and he doesn't get notified.

My other brother will send messages to me via Hangouts from his phone and it doesn't appear on my phone (running Talk), and won't appear as a notification every time on my tablet (running Hangouts). Only when I log into Gmail on my laptop do I get a popup regarding the message. This makes it unreliable.

I also attempt to video call my family from my tablet using Hangouts - they don't get notified, either those running Talk or those running Hangouts. I try ringing them from my laptop and they don't get notified.

If I call my brother from my phone running Talk, he gets notified. If I call my brother from the SAME ACCOUNT on my tablet running Hangouts, he doesn't get notified.

Your understanding of online/offline is different to mine then. If I am talking to someone next to me and they walk off, knowing when they were last next to me is of no use to me if I wish to continue talking to them. I need to know that they are still right next to me.

This is the way it used to behave in Talk and also the way it STILL behaves in Gmail chat, just NOT Hangouts on mobile. Hangouts tells me when they were last seen yet lists everyone I know in the contacts list. It would be far far far far far more useful to show those that are online NOW, not were online 2 days ago in my list. This is the way IM has behaved since I don't know when: for examples, see MSN Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, Google Talk, ICQ, face-to-face conversation etc. etc. etc.

No. The more reasonable explanation is that the OP is experiencing issues that don't manifest in your situation. It doesn't mean his complaints are necessarily false.

You seem to act like software never has bugs.

>> You seem to act like software never has bugs.

So every piece of software ever made sucks?

The quality of hangouts shouldn't be decided on anecdotal bug findings.

you should have told him he's using it wrong

messages that don't send

people that never appear online, even when you appear online to them

the ui disaster, and how I had to google to figure out how to sign out of it

my phone staying signed in and eating messages that I would much rather have had delivered to my laptop where I was actively conversing

all of this on a nexus running stock 4.4.latest

Hangouts gets slower with every version, to the point that my older dual-core phone can no longer run it at all -- it just hangs.

It's a bit half-assed, at least on phones, especially with its SMS handling.