Earlier this week at a Google+ event, the company announced several important additions to Hangouts for Android. The updated version 2.0 comes with SMS support as well as location sharing, the ability to display animated GIF files, as well as the previously discovered in a teardown statuses and moods. AndroidPolice covered the rumor on October 7th following my initial Google+ report on October 4th.

The coveted update may take a while to reach you, considering it hasn't even started officially rolling yet. Luckily, we have the APK from the Nexus 5 factory image you can download and safely install manually. It is what you're here for, isn't it? Go on, do it.

Update: If you're looking for Google Voice integration, take a look at this post.

Download

The APK is signed by Google and upgrades your existing app. The cryptographic signature guarantees that the file is safe to install and was not tampered with in any way. Rather than wait for Google to push this download to your devices, which can take days, download and install it just like any other APK.

Update: I'm getting constant crashes after sending my location via SMS, at least on the Note 3. Others are reporting crashing or unstable video chat and crashes when sending MMS. Hopefully Google will resolve this in an upcoming update. In the meantime, if you're stuck in a crash loop, just clear the app's data. You can also uninstall the update and reinstall the latest one from the Play Store for now.

File name: com.google.android.talk-2.0.012 (884159-30).apk (Android 2.3+).

Version: 2.0.012 (884159-30).

MD5: 66941f97fcbe0a32cf9cb109cbd0bda1.

Thanks, +Luke Olson, +Ian Heckel, and everyone else!