Now available from the Play Store!

Google just outed their stand-alone Messenger app on the Play Store, which confuses us a bit, since the app has many of the same features and functionality of the much maligned (and sometimes annoying) Hangouts app. The new app actually comes pre-installed with the new version of Android and as such follows the same Material Design elements implemented in Android 5.0. You can also see the same design elements on the recently updated Google Calendar.

The new app can replace your default messaging app to send SMS/MMS and has the ability to send audio messages and Emoji. It definitely looks better than the traditional messaging app that’s pre-installed on most Android devices, though you will need Android 4.1 or higher for it to work.

It’s also interesting why Google released this app in the first place since there’s already Hangouts that basically did all of the things that the new messenger app does. Is this Google’s way of acknowledging that very few people want to use Hangouts to send messages?

You can grab the app here from Google’s Play Store, or just install it via APK here.