If yesterday we saw how Google Chat already allows us to mark a message as unread, now we see how Google Messages, the company’s other messaging app, is planning major improvements in its next release.
The source code of its latest update gives us clues about its next two new features. Messages and Google is preparing to improve compatibility with IMessage reactions and to show us if it’s the birthday of the person we’re chatting with.
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IMessage reactions as an emoji
With the candidacies of Google Messages and iMessage Apple, your users can send messages to each other by SMS / MMS, but the IMessage reactions they are currently not resolved very well in Google Messages.
If an iMessage user reacts to a message, photo, or video, the Google Messages user doesn’t get that reaction, but takes a text message like:
> I liked an image
> He underlined “We are on the way”
It’s somewhat confusing and in Android conversations are filled with reaction texts that sometimes are already out of context if someone on iOS reacts hours later to a message. To solve this Google wants to turn iMessage reactions into emojis
In the code, there are references to a new function to classify iMessage reactions whose description says it is for “Display iPhone reactions as an emoji”. Another function called ‘ios_reactions_mapping’ seems to map iOS reactions to display correctly.
Apparently Google will convert an iMessage reaction to an equivalent emoji, but it’s unclear how these emojis will be displayed from Apple’s reactions in conversations. The most logical would be for them to be displayed like the reactions of Google Messages, in the same message.
Birthday reminders
Finally, the other novelty that is already hidden in the latest version of Google Messages are the birthday reminders. When we open a conversation, the app will let us know if it’s our contact’s birthday with the words “Wish him happy birthday!” and the animation of the birthday cake that we see on these lines. For this, we will need to have added the birthday of our contact in our calendar, or that the contact has publicly put his birthday in his profile.
Via | 9to5Google
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