Despite previous fumbles, Google has started taking messaging a lot more seriously in recent times. It has been heavily pushing for RCS adoption to deliver a seamless messaging experience across devices. The company is even running a Get the Message campaign and has shamed Apple publicly multiple times to get it on the RCS bandwagon. Recently, the big G announced a slew of new features for Google Messages, including threaded replies, starred suggestions, reminders and YouTube integration. Visual changes were limited to new icons for the Messages, Phone, and Contacts apps. While the new features in the Messages app are yet to go live, the new icons seem to be widely rolling out on the beta channel.
We are seeing the new Messages and Contacts app icons on several of our devices after installing the latest beta update from the Play Store. The Wear OS Messages app has also received an update in the beta channel with the new icon. We have not yet seen the new Phone app icon on our devices.
Unlike the previous version, the new Messages and Contacts app icons do not use shadows and feature a white background rather than blue. Side-by-side with the Google Chat app, you can easily make out that all three apps are from the same family and follow a similar design language. There's dynamic theming support, so the new icons will blend in perfectly with other icons on your home screen.
Given that Google is widely rolling out the new Messages and Contacts apps icon on the beta channel, a public release should not be far behind. The company has also already updated the Messages Play Store listing with the new app icon. This further hints at the new features being rolled out sooner than later to help deliver a better messaging experience.
If you are not on the Google Messages or Contacts beta channel, you can sideload the APK from APKMirror to enable the new icons.
Thanks: Nick, Hamzah!