Latest tweets from one in all Google’s prime Android executives ought to make it clear how badly Google desires Apple to help “RCS” messaging on iPhones, however they might depart many Android customers questioning “what’s RCS?”
RCS, which Google additionally labels “chat options,” represents an overdue improve to telephone messaging. This wireless-industry-endorsed commonplace provides a lot of the interactivity that Apple’s iMessage shipped in 2016—see when someone’s typing, know once they learn your message, and reply with tapback emojis—whereas encrypting messages in transit and, some end-to-end.
However zero overlap exists between RCS and iMessage. Hiroshi Lockheimer, Google’s senior vice chairman for cellular platforms, vented about this in Jan. 8 tweets sharing a Wall Avenue Journal Wall Avenue Journal story on the peer-pressure issue of getting one’s Android-sent messages seem in inexperienced bubbles amidst the blue bubbles of iMessage banter.
“Using peer pressure and bullying as a way to sell products is disingenuous for a company that has humanity and equity as a core part of its marketing,” Lockheimer wrote. “The standards exist today to fix this.”
In a follow-up thread on Monday, Lockheimer clarified that he wasn’t asking for iMessage for Android: “We’re asking Apple to help the {industry} commonplace for contemporary messaging (RCS) in iMessage, simply as they help the older SMS / MMS requirements.”
However he ignored how little help RCS sees in apply on Android telephones. First, it usually requires Google’s personal Android messaging app—as in, not what Samsung makes the default on its telephones, which dominate the Android market.
Final yr, Google did persuade the three main carriers to commit to creating its Messages app their default: T-Cell did final March, AT&T adopted in June, Verizon in July. However these pledges don’t have an effect on current telephones and, in some instances, stay in implementation.
Because of this, till at the moment I had loved RCS messaging precisely as soon as. Courtesy of testing with my colleague Sascha Segan, I now have three RCS… er, “chat options” conversations on my unlocked Pixel 5a on T-Cell.
Right this moment’s two chats required troubleshooting. On a Kyocera on Verizon operating Google’s Messages app, Segan needed to allow chat options in that app’s settings earlier than every of us may see our despatched messages in RCS’s dark-blue bubbles, then reboot it to activate end-to-end encryption. On an unlocked Galaxy S21 on T-Cell, he needed to change from Samsung’s messaging app to Google’s, then reboot to get full RCS help, “e2e” encryption included.
In the meantime, RCS stays off-limits within the different quantity I take advantage of on my Android telephone—a Google Voice quantity. Latest, belated upgrades to Google’s calling and messaging service have but so as to add help for Google’s most well-liked messaging commonplace.
Google’s Lockheimer makes a good level in calling out Apple for not supporting RCS as a fallback in iMessage. Apple might tout privateness as a human proper, however by leaving Android-iPhone messaging mired in SMS and MMS, it deprives privateness from an unlimited expanse of human interplay.
However Google has numerous work to do in its personal home too.
