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How to turn your smartphone into a professional Zoom webcam: Mounts, lights, and more
Upgrade the look of your video conferences without using an impossible-to-find webcam
With the recent rise of the Zoom era for people working from home, you'd expect the webcam market to see a big push in product innovation. We witnessed a massive jump in sales for webcams, but little has changed regarding new features. Many webcams are lagging behind because smartphones have become the primary multimedia device we use for just about everything, including video calls. Smartphones these days have powerful dedicated image processors and fancy AI tricks up their sleeves, which most traditional webcams simply can't match.
Change is an inevitable part of life, and for those of us who welcome Google products and services into our lives, we sure get a lot of it. Then again, just because Google has a habit of killing things off doesn't mean it's necessarily swift about it, and for literally years now we've been reading the writing on the wall for Hangouts. Now as the push to Chat moves through its final phases, Google's taking a big step towards putting Hangouts down for good and delisting the app for both Android and iOS
Google Workspace users will face Chat migration from Hangouts in March
A month to go before the chatocalypse
Gather 'round, Hangouts fans — the day you all knew was coming is near. Google has been slowly sunsetting one of its many messaging attempts, with Chat (the service, not the RCS backend) serving as a replacement. As we continue to roll into 2022, there's not much time left in the Hangouts transition timeline. Today's update from Google provides us with some hard dates for when users will be shuffled off into the world of Chat.
Hangouts users are taking their Google Chat transition frustrations out on the app's Play Store listing
Several missing features have left plenty of people confused
Like it or not, the death of Hangouts is truly underway. Earlier today, we reported on the ongoing transition to Google Chat, as users are now prompted to switch apps before being signed out of their account in favor of messaging directly in Gmail. As more and more of the Hangouts userbase is pushed from their preferred method of communicating, the Chat listing on the Play Store is getting review-bombed into oblivion.
The slow, painful death of Google Hangouts is reaching its final phase
It's time to say goodbye and switch to Chat
Hangouts is one of Google's most established messaging apps, but it's been dying a slow death for quite some time now. The transition to Google Chat is mostly complete for Google Workspace business users, but personal account holders have been able to hang on (sorry) for a bit longer. It looks like Google is preparing to put a stop to that, though.
Hangouts has been on the way out for four (!) years by now, but the service is still kicking. And in that process, Hangouts managed to reach an impressive milestone: It has been installed five billion times on the Play Store. That brings it right on par with a few pre-installed Google apps, but also with the two competing messaging products from Facebook.
The life and death of Hangouts: A Google tragedy
Or: A Hangouts retrospective on the eve of its retirement
The transition from Hangouts to Google Chat is now happening in earnest, with many even reporting that their group conversations have moved between the two platforms. It's just a matter of time until Hangouts itself is retired, so let's take a moment to look back at Google's most successful — and, perhaps, most ignored — messaging platform.
As part of Hangouts' long, drawn-out death, Google is also pulling the plug on the imaginatively titled Call Phones feature, which lets you place a phone call in Hangouts via Google Voice. It was mostly free, but you did have to pay for certain call types. With the feature set to expire by next month, Google is now sending out emails regarding refunds for any remaining balance you might have, and you can trigger the process manually as well.
Many Android fans believe in a sort of holy grail: That iMessage can somehow be brought to Android. Almost everything else when moving from iOS to Android has a workaround, an app, or some way to accommodate it, though iMessage remains an Apple-controlled platform exclusive with a dominating presence in the US market. But a new app formally launching today called Beeper aims to change that, delivering not just iMessage for Android, but a single unified messaging app for all your other services, too, like Telegram, Slack, Signal, Twitter DMs, Discord, Hangouts, and even IRC.
Now that Hangouts is dead, here are 5 apps to replace its dialer
You'll get to call overseas for cheap
It's no secret Google is pulling the plug on Hangouts, and even though its death has been chaotic, the service has been replaced by other ones to chat and place video calls. Unfortunately, few people know Hangouts also offered a dialer app, which allowed users to place calls for free in North America, as well anywhere in the world for relatively cheap fees. The software is also being phased out, and doesn't really come with an actual replacement. Sure, most people in US would have already switched to Google Voice for this purpose, but what about the ones in other countries?
Hangouts group video calls are dead, with users now pushed to Meet
Hit that video call button to ... generate a Meet link?
Hangouts has been pronounced dead uncountable times, but Google's ill-fated attempt at an instant messaging service is kicking and fighting its demise. Now Google has taken another step to replace its old messenger with Meet and Chat, as group video calls have become unavailable on Android and the web following the latest app update.
Ever since Google announced back in 2017 that Hangouts would be split into the Chat and Meet apps, consumers have been curious about when to expect major changes. We started seeing the first signs of the transition earlier this year, and now Google is letting Hangouts holdovers know what to expect going forward — including the plans for Google Fi and Google Voice customers.
Google Chat now has read receipts, to the joy of some and the dismay of others
Android Police knows whether or not you read this post
Google rebranded Hangouts Chat to Google Chat earlier this year, and since then, the company has been working on making it a more attractive offering with new additions like a dark theme. Last month, we learned that read receipts would be coming to the platform, and wouldn't ya know it, now the feature is starting to roll out right on schedule.
Read update
If you are having trouble loading Gmail or a YouTube video tonight, you aren't alone. A whole ton of Google services were having problems. Google Drive, Hangouts, Stadia, the Play Store, and even Nest were all affected, though reports indicate the issue has since resolved.
Hangouts users shouldn't panic about mysterious 'FCM' notifications
The mass messages are likely tied to recent reporting on Firebase exploits
Google Hangouts might not be as popular as it once was, but there are still plenty of people hanging on to it. A good number of Hangouts users across the globe received some strange notifications yesterday, which may be linked to a vulnerability in Google's Firebase platform.
New Google Voice bug is fumbling inbound calls for some
The advice: turn off call reception on Wi-Fi
If you use Google Voice, but are still able to catch most of your calls with your primary device, you may have encountered some funny behavior where they either pop up quickly, then disappear, and then either ring the phone again or move onto their other linked devices. The company has acknowledged the problem and, unfortunately, says it'll be sticking around for a while. Here's what you can do to get around it.
The long-awaited transition from Google Hangouts to Google Chat began earlier this year for G Suite users, but signs that the change has also started for general Google accounts have also been spotted. Some folks are seeing Hangouts messages from plain old non-G Suite accounts appearing in Google Chat.
Full migration from Hangouts to Google Chat is now available for G Suite admins
New 'Chat preferred' setting makes it the default in Gmail and replaces all classic Hangouts apps
The transition from Hangouts to Google Chat was always going to be long and arduous, but there is light at the end of the tunnel. The latest step for G Suite admins is now available, allowing them to set Chat as the preferred messaging service for their organization. This will finally make Chat the default and only messaging app within Gmail and move users away from the Hangouts apps they've become accustomed to.
Google finally begins the transition from Hangouts to Google Chat
G Suite users will soon have no reason to use classic Hangouts at all
Google's messaging strategy continues to perplex us all, but perhaps there's some light at the end of the tunnel? Everyone working on communication tools at Google was recently brought into a single unified team, which will hopefully lead to more consolidated efforts in the future (we can but hope). And another step on the road to finally doing away with the old Hangouts has been announced. G Suite users are now able to see their classic Hangouts conversations in Google Chat so everything is in one place.
Google reorganizes all its messaging services under one team
Don't get your hopes up for a unified platform, though
Google's strategy around messaging and communication applications is in a constant state of flux, an issue that has only been made worse by the isolated teams working on Duo, Hangouts Chat/Meet, and other products. While the numerous messaging applications might not be going away anytime soon, the teams behind them are finally operating under one roof.