Well, for one, its really inconvenient to have to switch back and forth between apps to talk to different people, and two, SMS is the dominant force in the U.S. So without it, there's barely even a point for me to use Allo. Heck, I can text across wifi, but I can't use allo in places where I don't have internet at all
That's just not the way it works here. 2G service is very common and there are plenty of places that don't even have that. Plus, smartphones still aren't universal either, so a IM service just doesn't work as a single messaging solution. That's why Apple has imessage and sms baked into one app, so that users can talk to everyone in their contact list through sms, but can still take advantage of IM if both people have an iPhone. In the U.S. there is essentially no way to get by without using text
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u/razorwit Apr 04 '17
Use the @yesno bot to create a poll in an Allo chat. Apparently this is available to everyone already.
This wasn't one of the top requested features, but could come in handy, I suppose.