Version 3.0 of Android Messages, Google’s SMS app, has started rolling out in the Google Play Store today. While it doesn’t sport a lot of changes, mostly bug fixes and performance improvements, it does drop support for Android KitKat.
KitKat was released back in October 2013 so dropping support for the now 4 year and a bit year old version is not entirely shocking and it fits with Google upping the minimum supported API level in other apps. Frankly, at this point nobody should be using KitKat purely from a security perspective.
With this update, Android Messages only supports API level 21 or higher. In layman terms, that’s Android Lollipop, which too quite old at this point in Android history.
Outside of this change, don’t expect much in the way of new features or functionality. Overall, despite its dot-zero build number, there isn’t much new to report or overall functionality change. A recent app teardown suggests that web-based support for the app is coming, similar to the ability to send SMS’ from your computer like Hangouts has done in the past (and still does for Project Fi customers)
The update has been released to the Google Play Store so for those of you who have Messages installed, you should see the update come to your device over the course of the next few days.
