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Comment by Pxtl | Hacker News Reader

> (I still hate hangouts, putting SMS and web chat at the same place is very confusing for the average user

Apple and WinPhone do this fine and it's an excellent idea in a world where SMS is overpriced that the app should automatically look for free ways to get the message to the target seamlessly.

I look at Hangouts the same as I look at Plus - great idea to integrate the myriad things into one place and consolidate a zillion balkanized Google products... but Google just isn't good at doing that.

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I wouldn't call Apple's implementation perfect. If you switch to a non-Apple phone, you stop receiving texts from iPhone users completely (and silently).

> Apple and WinPhone do this fine and it's an excellent idea in a world where SMS is overpriced that the app should automatically look for free ways to get the message to the target seamlessly.

Smartphone plans with unlimited text and limited data with a high surchage for overages are easier to find than ones with limited SMS and unlimited data, so its not really clear that "SMS is overpriced" anymore, especially when compared with data.

Wifi is free and Hangouts messages are tiny anyways. The bigger concern is avoiding accidentally sendning a message to a user who isn't connected to Hangouts through their primary device - I've often found Hangouts messages waiting for me on my tablet at home.

> Wifi is free

In places that have free WiFi (or where you've already paid for it), WiFi is free or at least has a zero marginal cost per byte. But that's usually not everywhere people use phones.

Most of the people I contact are way less reactive on hangouts (if they ever look at it) than they can be through SMS. I've been a few times in the situation where I realized that I was contacting them through hangouts involuntarily, and that's why they weren't answering. I've never had a Windows phone or IOS, so I don't know how they do, I just hope that it's easier to use

I can't speak for Windows Phone, but iOS displays messages from iMessages -- their private messaging service -- almost identically to normal SMS. (There are some subtle indicators of which one's being used, but it's not obviously different.)

Oddly, the "official" messaging system baked into WinPHone 7 was actually Facebook messages. It didn't switch-over between FB and SMS messages silently, but it did intertwingle the messaging thread between the two platforms and there was a toggle to select which you were using to contact them.

Dunno what they do in WP8.

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