It was back in March when Google announced it was going to pull the plug for SMS on Hangouts. Well, its happened. Now you can’t SMS anyone through the app like you used to. But Project FI and Google Voice subscribers will still have access to the feature. Google also announced back at that time they were splitting the Hangouts app in two. They are bringing an enterprise solution called Meet & Chat.
Google also announced that the Android messages will take the mantle of the primary messaging app from Hangouts. Android Messages does provide some useful features. But you can’t use SMS and other chats in Android messages side by side.
Android users who have to do a lot of SMS need not worry. their SMS data will be backed up when they migrate to another app. In the meanwhile, the only solution is to use the Facebook messenger app which will offer you a similar experience as Hangouts.One of the very convenient features of Hangouts was that you could SMS anyone using the browser extension.
As of now, neither Allo nor Android messages can provide the SMS merging feature which Hangouts did.
