This would be a lot more compelling if, when I got a Google voice voicemail and saw that in my Gmail app on my "Google Experience" Moto-G and clicked on the "listen to it" link it didn't just vanish leaving me with an open browser and no message.
I like my phone, it works for me, but the sheer disconnectedness of it all is really jarring. Things show up in random places, or not at all, (especially media), and there is no "data connectivity" from anywhere to anywhere else, the same text message appears in my GVoice app, my Gmail app, and as a text message in Messaging.
How do you even begin to make a coherent business tool out of that?
> same text message appears in my GVoice app, my Gmail app, and as a text message in Messaging.
The "official" way to deal with this is to go to the Google Voice site and turn of emailing yourself every text. Then install the Hangouts app and enable SMS through Hangouts. Then disable notifications in the Google Voice and Messaging apps.
Result: On phone Hangouts handles texts + voicemail + Google chat, and on desktop GMail (or the Hangouts extension for Chrome) handles them.
At least, that's my understanding of what Google's intended best practice is.
You don't need Google Voice at all anymore (that I am aware of) and Messaging just goes to sleep when you make Hangouts your SMS app.
GV integration is not the most seamless perfect experience ever (for example, incoming IP calls go straight to voicemail when I'm on corporate WiFi) but I'm fairly pleased with it.
Google really did drop the ball on messaging.
Hangouts was supposed to progressively regroup all these messaging capabilities in one service, but the SMS integration alone has been so bad that Google rolled out a separate SMS app after deleting it in the first place (the new version is an improved Material revamp, but it still serves the same purpose).
There is probably a very interesting insider story behind this cock-up.
In the mean-time, I hope that Google will learn from these attempts and improve Hangouts in meaningful ways. Sundar Pinchai has already alluded to the fact that Hangouts and Photos are going to be treated as entirely different teams/services than Google+, which is probably a good start.
I like my phone, it works for me, but the sheer disconnectedness of it all is really jarring. Things show up in random places, or not at all, (especially media), and there is no "data connectivity" from anywhere to anywhere else, the same text message appears in my GVoice app, my Gmail app, and as a text message in Messaging.
How do you even begin to make a coherent business tool out of that?