The app has been in testing for a few months now, and in that time it accumulated over 20k members in the G+ tester community. Today, it's finally being released for the masses :)
Side note, I'm publishing an update in a couple hours to fix some of the crashes that have been showing up in this update
"It looks better" is a very valid answer, but honestly after reading the Google Play page, I'm still not sure. From reading the description in the Play Store, here's where I believe QKSMS differs from Hangouts:
* More visual customization
* Offers a mysterious QKReply feature (screenshot seems to suggest this is a special dialog for replying to incoming messages)
* MMS may sometimes be more difficult to set up
Though my biggest question is how similar this thing is to another one called Textra. Can you talk a little bit about what's going on with both of these apps and why they look identical? Plus Textra already has 1-5 million installs.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.textra&hl=...