In a surprising move, Apple has announced today that it will adopt the RCS (Rich Communication Services) messaging standard. The feature will launch via a software update “later next year” and bring a wide range of iMessage-style features to messaging between iPhone and Android users.
Apple’s decision comes amid pressure from regulators and competitors like Google and Samsung. It also comes as RCS has continued to develop and become a more mature platform than it once was.
Ugh, yet another chat network to use…
I guess now we wait for Android to add support too.
It already has support on Android. I send rcs messages to other friends with Android. Read receipts. No longer mms and sms. It’s great.
Google Messages is a proprietary chat app that connects to proprietary Google Jire servers on phone carrier’s site. It does not use barebone RCS protocol, this is why only Google is now able to make such app even if the app does not use any permission that other apps don’t have.
Native support for Android was planned for Android 11, soon we’ll get Android 14 and still no support in sight.
RCS falls back to SMS/MMS, so it’s not another app, it’s a replacement for texting (and iMessage).
iMessage is, basically, just a proprietary way of doing what RCS is designed to do, so Apple can use peer pressure to get teens (and adults) to exclusivity buy iPhones so their messages are the “right” colour.
Some time ago Signal was falling back to SMS too.
How is this propietary aspect of iMessage non existing on Android with RCS? Years goes by and still the only Android app that can support this protocol seems to be Google Messages.
Third-party RCS clients like Beeper use Android virtual machine with Google Messages running… Seriously, even Facebook Messenger seems to be less locked down.