The third developer preview of Android O came with a stack of new versions for Google’s assorted apps. Many of them are essentially unchanged from the regular versions available through the Play Store, but there are a few offering up some excellent new features.

Android Messages falls into that group as it adds the option to mark a message read from the notification shade and customization for contact notifications has been completely reorganized to take advantage of Android O’s Notification Channels. A teardown also reveals that Android Messages is going to join the ranks of semi-intelligent chat apps that offers suggestions based on context.

You can certainly download the current v2.3 apk if you like, and it can be installed on devices running versions of Android below O, but it will probably crash on launch, so it is unadvisable.

Source:AndroidPolice