Apple is bringing RCS to the iPhone in iOS 18 | The new standard will replace SMS as the default communication protocol between Android and iOS devices
Apple is bringing RCS to the iPhone in iOS 18 | The new standard will replace SMS as the default communication protocol between Android and iOS devices
The long-awaited day is here: Apple has announced that its Messages app will support RCS in iOS 18. The move comes after years of taunting, cajoling, and finally, some regulatory scrutiny from the EU.
Right now, when people on iOS and Android message each other, the service falls back to SMS — photos and videos are sent at a lower quality, messages are shortened, and importantly, conversations are not end-to-end encrypted like they are in iMessage. Messages from Android phones show up as green bubbles in iMessage chats and chaos ensues.
Apple’s announcement was likely an effort to appease EU regulators.
What if they kept the green color just to troll...
They probably will. They're aware of and actively foster the "in-group" psychology that plays out in youth social circles. Anyone with a non-Apple phone is excluded as lower class, weird, or less-than. You don't get included in the group chats that are often the center of your peers' social lives because no one wants the annoyance of dealing with the limitations of conversing with a green bubble. You must conform, purchase the correct products, and sign over your life to the correct social media platforms if you want to participate in society.
Yea, but the real question is will the youth see through the BS or not? Before it wasn't just a color, green bubbles actively broke things in blue bubble group chats
But once that's gone with (hopefully) the rollout of RCS (which should fix most, if not all, the things that broke gcs) it really would be "just a color"
Ofc, Apple being Apple, I wouldn't put it past them to artificially "break" things or arbitrarily introduce limits between RCS and iMessage
On the iOS 18 preview page, they show RCS with green bubbles
100% they will do this.
But I wonder if the effect will be different to now. I know Apple wants to retain the idea that their users are in an exclusive blue bubble group. But currently, green bubbles are associated with shitty looking images, video, etc, due to MMS. Especially for people that don't know why files come through that way, green bubbles are always presented as inferior by virtue of actually being inferior.
But now, if they do keep the green bubs, they'll just be green. Green at feature parity is different from green with clear differences.
They won't be including encryption so it's not quite feature parity but yeah
I'm guessing orange.
They almost certainly will. That blue is a prestige feature for a lot of people.
I don’t really care, so long as I can easily send texts and pictures back and forth, I’ll be happy.
Apple could easily do the bare minimum to keep regulators at bay while still keeping the experience as shitty as possible so that Android will continue to look bad. For example they could refuse to implement reactions or typing indicators, or they could even deliberately compress videos. I'm expecting the worst until we see otherwise.
For example they could refuse to implement reactions or typing indicators
Reactions already work in MMS groups, use them every day.
or they could even deliberately compress videos
Except they’re already advertising improved quality of photos and video in non-iMessage chats. Doubt they would advertise a specific feature only to make it worse.
Disliked a message.
Doubt they would advertise a specific feature only to make it worse.
Not like companies have never done that...
Apple will probably use white bubbles with yellow font.
Not to criticise apple too badly here, but that's what will happen, as the version of RCS they use won't have E2EE.
And... It'll still be tied to your phone number. Why would I want another shitty messaging system that's tied to my phone number?
It's the replacement for SMS... Are you upset that WiFi phone calls are tied to your phone number?
I know people want this. I do to. But SMS going away will suck. Even in 2024, there’s still that moment you have every now and then that you can’t get a call out but a sms will make it out just fine. SMS rides along with the carriers ping signal. It’s not part of the data signal.
Right now my phone gives me the option if RCS fails for some reason, to send the message again with SMS. I assume that will be the case here as well.
I don't think sms will go away, that ping is fundamental to GSM & LTE so far as I can tell.
You may need an app that explicitly taps into the sms feature though
Google Messages app already falls back to SMS automatically if RCS fails. SMS is not going anywhere.
Here me out, iMessage on any OS, wait, no, not just that, how about no hardware vendor is allowed to produce software that only runs on their hardware and for any given core function the hardware must prompt the end user with a competitive selection of capable apps to accomplish said function (to be downloaded and installed upon selection) instead of coming with a default option enabled. Let's get crazy and say that any hardware vendor must allow software they produce for their own hardware to be uninstalled and replaced by software of the end user's choosing.
I'm talking some "treating United States v. Microsoft" as legally binding precedent" shit.
Meanwhile, regulators be like...
.(Side note: what's up with the bullshit where Apple makes an Android-native AppleTV app that will install on a phone fine but is blocked from running once it detects it's not an AndroidTV device? Apple acts like it would be an undue burden to make iMessage for Android (and pretends they didn't make the decision to not release an Android client with their hardware business in mind) but their Apple Music app somehow runs better on Android than it does on iOS...)
“Why does this microwave oven cost $1500?”
“Two reasons. The first is that it has to have a full network stack to allow it to download software from competing appliance vendors. The second is the cost that the manufacturer had to bear to develop software for every single other microwave sold. There are some pretty weird architectures out there, and they had to hire a whole bunch of programmers.”
I'm still of the opinion that the basic message app should only be SMS.
Then anything else should be its own thing. Mixing the two is a recipe for disaster, where it's a consumer product.Counterpoint: SMS shouldn’t exist, and RCS is our best shot at replacing it right now
SMS has one feature nothing else does. It’s not data per se. if you can ping a tower you can get a message out. You can’t do that with anything else.
Makes a difference when you’re out in BFE.
RCS is crap, inconsistent, unreliable, lacking, buggy. It doesn't even handle Dual SIM .....
Android needed a native "iMessage" style solution at least 10 years ago.
I can buy a $99 flip phone, basic phone, up to a $1,500 premium device, SMS/MMS will function the same across all 3 devices. RCS however will not. So how is this the answer to advanced messaging on Android? It isn't.....
If Google bought BBM & made it their own when it was still relevant in the consumer space, made it native on all Android 10 devices & later with SMS/MMS fall back, this would be something! Damn I miss BlackBerry....
RCS is not seamless, not native, and it simply is not it. It's the 1 thing I hate about Android, as creative and customizable as the software is, we need more.....I hate what Apple represents in the consumer space and how people often think who use an iPhone which makes me never want one.....
The moment Google saw the exclusivity Apple was doing, Android should have followed suite.
RCS sucks.....
Crazy thing is Google Hangouts did this back in 2012! They had it! You could text and message digitally to someone’s hangouts acct. then they killed it because of some legacy code or something.
also they kept renaming it
And now I'm irritated by this all over again.
And yet Google still hasn't rolled out RCS for Google Voice, and last I checked there was an issue with it and Google Fi as well. (It works but it precludes some advertised feature of Fi or something.)
Currently Google has bricked RCS for people with rooted phones in such a way that it fails silently for like the 4th time this year, and it's looking like the modders may not be able to keep getting around it.
I've had no issues with Fi and RCS. Then again, maybe Fi on pixel is different.
Fi has two different, incompatible options for how to sync your messages to a computer or other device that isn't your primary phone with your SIM (or e-SIM): the so-called "option 1" is RCS compatible, but treats your phone as the canonical device that has the primary copy of all messages, voicemails, etc. "Option 2" is device agnostic, where all messages and voicemails live on the cloud, and your phone (and all other devices) merely syncs with that primary copy in the cloud.
If your phone breaks or dies or is lost/stolen, Option 2 keeps chugging along with all your logged in devices, but the dead phone is the single point of failure for Option 1.
Ideally there would be a device agnostic way to access RCS through your account, but every implementation seems to require a specific SIM.
I think it was something to do with the Fi-specific syncing of messages to the web version.
Honestly, it'd be a good retort from Apple if they ran a commercial that said, "We'll support RCS once all your products do" and then show a screenshot of Google Voice.
But they're planning to support it
Yeah, if Voice doesn't have RCS support by the time iOS 18 launches, I'll be moving off it for messaging. Have a number of text groups with iPhones that will benefit from everyone on RCS, most important knowing that my group messages were actually received. MMS still randomly drops messages or they get massively delayed or received out of order.
Man it's a shame that Google RCS doesn't run on android phones by default if you have a custom rom or rooted your device or have an unlocked bootloader. Guess this won't really affect me then and it doesn't really matter.
RCS is proprietary, right?
Finally, I'll be added to the group chat for work. I'll know where to report to just as early as everyone else.
So when are they making FaceTime open source too? That's what Steve Jobs said when he first announced it.
Also, FOSS clients for RCS messaging should exist. My only options so far are Google's messaging app, Samsung's weird thing, and if I don't want either, an iPhone. Eh... I'd like more options. Let's just have all messaging applications support open source protocols, including Signal because why not??
I don't know if it's a good thing... To use RCS you have to use a compatible OS + device and use the google messages app (maybe also the Samsung one now) and why does the brand implemented this is because google "offered" the servers to run this protocol. I think even today the best way is to get onto secure messaging apps (like Signal, Session, SimpleX...)
Has hell frozen over?
I guess, if I'm on Android, this will make no difference to me?
If you're texting an iPhone user it'll make a difference
So no difference?
You mean SMS? I rarely use SMS these days. And I don't know many people with an iPhone. That's a US, UK thing it seems.
I’m gonna wait to see how this is implemented but it sounds bad on the face of it.
RCS is a terrible standard. But China wants it, so Apple is forced to add it.
