Hangouts Android app incapacitated by Emoji bug

A word of warning to trigger-happy emoji-bearing chatters on Google+ Hangouts. Sending a flood of the popular emoji faces in a chat could crash the Hangouts app and prevent logging backing in, practically rendering the app useless and causing tears and pouts more than smiles.

As a disclaimer, the issue was only reported to happen in a group chat. According to the user who had the misfortune of getting hit by the bug, someone sending a ton, in this scenario 10 pages worth, of emojis caused the Hangouts app on Android to crash. What was even worse is the fact that those who got affected could no longer restart the app and log in. Hangouts users on iPhones were reported to not be affected at all.

While this might sound to be an annoying bug at best, it should be remembered that starting version 2.0, Hangouts gains the ability to send and receive SMS and MMS. On the Nexus 5, this is taken to the extreme, making Hangouts the one messaging app to rule them all. This practically means that miscreants or well-meaning jokers can potentially lock out Nexus 5 users from being able to read or send whatever message they might wish.

All hope is not lost, however, as a slightly involved workaround is available to temporarily fix the issue. The fix involves going into Google+ via a computer or web browser and leaving the group where the culprit emojis reside. Now you can use Hangouts as normal, at least until the next emoji spam. Alternatively, Android users, even those on the Nexus 5, can install a different default SMS app like 8sms to prevent being locked out.

VIA: The Droid Guy