So I'm still unhappy about the move to shift SMS out of Hangouts, but concerns over Hangouts being eliminated appear to be exaggerated, as Google is rolling out improvements to audio/video connections via peer-to-peer connections. That change is supposedly why SMS is being phased out.
Though I still think that's a bad idea. While it would be great if everyone could IM via Hangouts, things aren't nearly that universal … except for SMS. It may be old, creaky, and primitive, but carrier-based SMS is the most widespread messaging mechanism in the world, and breaking it out into a separate application without some compelling reason seems like an inconvenience to me, at least in my personal user story.
Improved call quality coming to Hangouts for Android via peer-to-peer connection
Improved Hangouts is one of the most common requests from Android users. According to a rumor late last year, Google is working on making it a better chat client by removing SMS capabilities. It no…
