There's one Google app that your Android phone doesn't come with that's better than the rest

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galaxy s6 arrow pointing to messenger app

Antonio Villas-Boas/Business Insider

Every Android phone comes with a messaging app for sending text messages. 

Depending on your carrier, some of them even come with three different messaging apps, including Google's Hangouts, your phone maker's own app, and your carrier's own app. 

It can get confusing when deciding which messaging app you're going to use.

I was using Google's Hangouts app for both Gmail chat and SMS text messaging, and it was great. It let me merge both Gmail chat (commonly called Gchat) conversations and texts into one conversation box. But it felt a little cluttered and slow at times.

In the search for a simple texting app, I found one that's made by Google that doesn't come with any Android phone, even Google's Nexus devices.

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Google's Messenger app doesn't let you combine Gmail chats and text conversations into one box, but it lets you take a capture a moment you want to share with the person you're texting with extremely quickly with a built-in camera viewfinder.

When you press the attachments icon that looks like a paperclip, a small camera viewfinder window appears from the bottom. Once you press the check mark, the apps takes a picture and uploads it quickly and automatically as a text to the recipient. All you need to do is press send. 

The row of icons towards the bottom also let you upload a photo from your gallery, add an emoji, record a voice message, or send details of your location with a map image.

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google messenger app icon row

Antonio Villas-Boas/Business Insider

The bottom row of icons let you take a picture from the Messenger app itself, upload a photo from your gallery, add an emoji, create a voice message, or share your location.

It also has an extremely clean and simple interface with contrasting bold color accents for each individual contact your texting:

google messenger user interface

Screenshots

Messenger apps made by phone makers and carriers can also be OK, and some even look good, but none have the nifty popup camera viewfinder that Google's Messenger has.

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