there wont be an sms app in kitkat, it will be part of the hangouts app.
there isnt one. widgets will be like before, a long press on the home screen brings up a menu where you can chose widgets.
I'm not too happy with this if that is the case. Hangouts has far to many hiccups and slowdowns to be my sole messaging app.
ill be honest with you, i feel the same way about hangouts. ive been replacing hangouts with gtalk until about a month ago, for that exact reason. hangouts did slightly improve, thats why im using it now, but it is not the best app. oddly, it runs quick without issues on my nexus 7, and on my friends note 2. but on the n4, it has issues. hopefully its update will correct that for the n4, and hopefully it runs as perfect on the n5 as it does on my n7.
I am pretty sure that Google has smoothened out the hiccups you speak of. I for one think that the Hangouts and SMS merge is a smart one. I bet users who has never used Hangout will now get familiar with it.
I just hope they give some options to hide groups of people and separate sms chats from hangouts. I don't need everyone from Google+ showing up. Most I don't talk to, but like to follow for news ect.
