A few months ago we learned that Google was planning to retire the communication service known as Google Hangouts… while transitioning some of the key features to its Hangouts Chat and Hangouts Meet services.
It’s still not entirely clear what this will mean or when it will happen for personal users. But Google has announced that it will begin transitioning G Suite customers to Chat later this year.
On April 16th G Suite users with classic Hangouts enabled will also see Chat on the web and in mobile apps, giving users a chance to get used to the new version. Then in October classic Hangouts will be discontinued for G Suite customers and users will be “transitioned to Chat.”
If this all sounds confusing and like a possibly bad idea to you, then you’re not alone.
Oh, and hey, it’s been a while since I’ve done one of these Lilbits articles, so here’s a refresher course: this article contains links to a bunch of tech news stories spotted around the web.
These are all items I shared to social media sometime in the past few days, and now that I’ve compiled a bunch of them, I figured it was time to do a roundup article.
- Upcoming Hangouts service consolidation [Google]
It’s the beginning of the end of another Google chat app… sort of. - Coding on a Chromebook [About Chromebooks]
Kevin Tofel explains how he’s using Chrome OS as his primary PC for development tasks. - Intel Discontinues Quark SoCs and Microcontrollers [AnandTech]
The low-power SoC was designed for IOT applications including wearables and smart home gadgets. It’ll be a slow death though — Intel will continue shipping Quark chips to customers through mid-2022, although customers need to get their final orders in by July 19th of this year. - Samsung Launches Exynos 7 Series 7904 Mobile Processor [Samsung]
The new chip is designed for mid-range smartphones to be sold in the Indian market. - HandBrake 1.2.0 Released [Handbrake.fr]
Handbrake 1.2.0 switches the core decoding library from Libav to FFMpeg, fixes bugs, adds some new presets - Press renders for the entire Moto G7 smartphone series [xda-developers]
Motorola’s new budget phones are expected to unveiled soon including a dual-camera model and a few different notch styles for the front-facing camera. - LG Gram 17 Review [Laptop Magazine]
This is the first in-depth review of the LG Gram 17 I’ve seen. Sounds like it gets long battery life, offers decent performance, and generally delivers on the promise of a 3 pound laptop with a 17 inch display… but it’s expensive.
You can keep up on the latest headlines by following Liliputing on Twitter and Facebook.
Where Intel is going!! It killed Atom… is it really? confused. Now it killed quark… actually not!! confused. Come on, Intel is a giant, and it need to move like a giant. Don’t create a news just by creating and then killing something or confused…..
We expect something more from Intel …
I use Hangouts Dialer with my Google Voice number on my cell phone every day. Haven’t had a cell plan or activated phone in years. Anyone know a good alternative to Hangouts Dialer?
I believe the Google Voice app has already added this functionality to its beta, and for some time now. I’ve been waiting impatiently for it to roll out to the public release version, not sure when it will finally arrive.