Hangouts vs Now for Reddit

Start chatting on your phone, then on your computer, then on your tablet seamlessly!

Hangouts uses Google account credentials. If you use any other Google service, then you already have an account set up.

If you have signed in your Google account, Hangouts allows making video calls with up to 10 people or one-on-one. There are business, education and government solutions that increase the participant count to for video calls to 15 as well as offers support for those accounts.

Additionally, you can switch between using either the front-facing or rear-facing camera on your phone or tablet.

Google offers all features of Hangouts completely free on iOS, Android and web with quick and reliable sync across all platforms. It's also tightly integrated in other Google services - it can be accessed from services such as Gmail, Google+, Chrome.

While the standard Hangouts offering is completely free, there are business, education and government solutions that increase the participant count to for video calls to 15 and offers support that may cost money.

Use the extension on any computer you can run Chrome browser to text from your computer or tablet!

It's possible to know what each and every participant of the group has read. Their icons are displayed below the last message.

If you have gifs in your mobile phone, you can share them in the conversation and your partner will be able to see it animated in the chat.

Google Voice is a service that enables making and receiving free phone calls within US. Google Voice forwards incoming calls to all connected devices and allows placing calls from any of the connected devices, but they will show as coming from the Google Voice number.

Hangouts completely integrates Google Voice, allowing you to place calls and receive texts and voicemail from all of your devices. The Hangouts app for Android also includes a needed dialer for making calls with the users Google Voice number.

Hangouts app for Android can be extended with an optional dialer for making calls. Most calls to US and Canada are free and international calls have cheap rates.

A Google Voice account will be needed in order have a number that allows these calls to be made.

Hangouts can inform about the status of other users including what device they are currently using, whether they are in the middle of a call and when were they last seen. This allows making sure that you're not disturbing someone when initiating a conversation. It's possible to granularly turn off status sharing.

Hangouts can add different effects and overlays to video calls that can be viewed on your device. Unfortunately, they can't be set from your phone.

Hangouts can be used completely hands free, even if the app is not open and the phone is locked: "OK Google, send a Hangouts message to Mary".

With the card-based UI, the app fits in very well design wise with the Material Design of the OS. Everything is intuitive to use being that the interface is familiar and follows Google's design guidelines.

Now for Reddit utilizes the transparent nav bar implemented in Android 4.4+, making for a cleaner looking interface.

The design of the icon for Now for Reddit is clean, simple and fits well with material design.

Now for Reddit is one of the few Reddit clients that come with the ability to change how much content can be viewed on the screen. You'd also be hard pressed to find another Reddit client that can show you full-size images (via full-size cards) without you having even tapped on the image.

Keep in mind that the configurable card sizes might also have an impact on battery consumption, ranging from tiny cards (most battery efficient) to full size cards (most battery/data hungry).

The design of the app lends itself well to phones and tablets alike no matter the orientation that the device is being held in. Not having to switch apps depending on the users device is a nice feature.

Using Android's profile GPU rendering tool it can be clearly shown how the Now for Reddit is generally more responsive than quite a few of the other popular reddit clients. For people obsessive about the 60 FPS mark, it would be hard to find a near 60 FPS experience as good as Now for Reddit.