Facebook decided to remove the little-used SMS feature on Messenger back in 2013, but according to a report from Android Police on Thursday, the feature might be making a comeback. Now that Messenger has exploded in popularity, and continues to grow at a rapid pace, having a built-in MMS/SMS feature would help secure the app’s position as the only messaging app you’ll ever need. The report also claims that Messenger will start supporting multiple accounts in the near future, as well as a new Action and Status bar.
It wasn’t too long ago that some users discovered that Facebook has been playing around with a Material Design revamp of their popular messaging app. But it seems like the social sultan isn’t stopping at aesthetics. The Facebook Messenger team is playing around with several new features, but only a handful of test users are seeing the changes right now. First off, it looks like Messenger is getting the ability to support multiple accounts in-app. This comes on the heels of Instagram, a social media service also owned by Facebook, doing the same with their app. With these changes, users who have more than one Facebook account (for whatever reason) will be able to swap back and forth between their identities with just a couple of taps. Second, it looks like they are playing around with SMS/MMS integration. Now, long ago in the Before Times, Messenger actually had the ability to support SMS and MMS messages, but Facebook wound up ripping the feature out because nobody was really using it. However, 2016 is a very different battleground for messaging apps, with several contenders competing to be the one messaging service to rule them all.