It made sense to me to merge SMS, WhatsApp style messaging and video calls into one app to save resources and switching between apps so I set up Hangouts to be the SMS app.
I just had one problem - how to send SMS messages from Hangouts? (If I know the person has a problem with data reception, then I do specifically want to send an SMS at that time, for instance.)
According to Google:
"Choose a contact from your conversations list. Touch someone's name at the top. You can then choose SMS from the drop-down menu."
But that is not true in practice. It appears the reason I couldn't do that was because I was in the "hangout" for Hangout messages (I will call it MoIP - Message over IP - in the following) and video calls for that person, not the SMS "hangout" for that person.
Integrating the two in one app and then separating them seems to be going half a step backwards again, so does anybody know if I can merge those two hangouts and do SMS, MoIP and video calls to a person from the same "hangout"?
My phone is a Moto G 1st generation without 4G (XT1032) with Android 5.0 "Lollipop".