Gallery is baked into Android as the default photo-handling app. The Android gallery app and Google Photos app is another classic example. With multiple apps all able to send text messages installed it causes confusion: which one do users use? Should you disable some? What happens if a text message opens in one? Do they sync across to the others? Photos or Gallery? And that’s before anything like Facebook Messenger or third-party text-messaging apps are installed. Now Google has yet another text messaging app, meaning users of Android phones made by Samsung, Sony, HTC and LG could have not one, not two, but three apps installed that can send and receive text messages. At the same time all Android smartphones also had at least one other text messaging app baked into the operating system, creating duplication that couldn’t be removed.Īndroid’s ability to choose which messaging apps you use even for core functions is great, but Google’s app duplication simply confuses and that’s before third-party apps are installed. Hangouts then received the ability to send SMS messages in April, making it the the one messaging app for Google’s services and text messages. Initially Google Hangouts couldn’t send and receive SMS, instead operating only over the internet like WhatsApp, but connecting to Google Chat for messaging desktop users as well as smartphone users. Later came Google Chat, a mobile extension of Google’s instant messaging app from Gmail, which morphed into Hangouts. Then there was Google Voice, which offered US customers one universal phone number to use across multiple devices, for both calls and texts.
Google started its text messaging with the Messaging app, which came built in to every Android device.
This conscious uncoupling is a good thing, because it allows Google and others to update the core apps on an Android phone through the Google Play store, rather than having to wait for updates to the operating system.īut it also demonstrates Google’s confused software strategy for Android, with multiple apps that do the same thing all from the same company. It updates the basic text messaging app that comes pre-installed on almost every Android smartphone, and is part of Google’s strategy to uncouple its apps from its Android operating system. Google Messenger is a stripped back text messaging app that can only send and receive SMS and MMS, and can’t send messages over the internet like rivals WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger or even Google’s Hangouts app.
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