Now this has taken a huge turn—Apple has agreed to adopt the RCS (Rich Communication Services) messaging standard.
Apple confirmed the news to 9to5Mac, saying:
Later next year, we will be adding support for RCS Universal Profile, the standard as currently published by the GSM Association. We believe RCS Universal Profile will offer a better interoperability experience when compared to SMS or MMS. This will work alongside iMessage, which will continue to be the best and most secure messaging experience for Apple users.
What does this mean? Currently, when chatting with an Android phone or other non-Apple device, the chat colours are green. Adopting RCS means both iPhones and Android phones will work better together when it comes to messaging, and not just rely on SMS.
Developing, refresh for updates…
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green will become the new blue 🙂
Chances are they’ll leave RCS as green. Will be interesting to see if just being green still triggers the insecurities of Android users.
Not mentioned here is that Apple will not use the Google flavour of RCS, mostly affecting the “security” Google imposed. Apple will work with GSM to implement an industry standard with end to end encryption. Will be interesting to see if Google goes along or sticks with their proprietary standard.
Gross 🤮 lol
Sadly apart my family, almost everyone contact me via Messenger nowadays…
I actually prefer the way it is now, being able to tell who has an iPhone/iPad and who has an Android phone just based on how the text message is sending, is awesome. If it’s blue, they have an iDevice. If it’s green, they have an Android.
When RCS becomes universal on all iDevices and Androids in 2024, I won’t be able to tell anymore.
But why does it really matter so long as everyone is using the same standard?
I get the curiosity I guess, I just think it will be nice having one uniform method. Similar to iPhone adopting USB C, long term anyway.
Yeah, mostly just curiosity, that and I’m IT so it’s darn handy in the workplace when I have to help someone out I know what I’m getting into ahead of time, lol.
Mostly because RCS isn’t a complete standard. It doesn’t even have a standard for end to end encryption. Google uses some proprietary implementation that it would be wise not to trust and isn’t on by default, making it effectively useless from a privacy or security perspective.
Apple will add RCS but only once they’ve worked with the GSMA to implement a new standard for e2e encryption for RCS. If Google sticks with their possibly compromised flavour, we’re still then stuck with two incompatible versions.
One would think they could get it done before “later next year” but this is a step forward.
The need to wait until they’ve worked with the GSM body to create a new standard for encryption. They aren’t willing to use Google’s proprietary implementation. From a privacy perspective, that’s probably a good idea.
Awesome news. I hate having whatsapp installed on my phone and this will be a great step to get rid of it.
We can thank Europe for pushing for this, Apple really had no choice. Ironic considering most iPhone users there use WhatsApp or Telegram for text. Still, this a good thing for smartphones users everywhere who value the security and privacy that E2E encryption in RCS brings over the unsecured and privacy starved status quo. We all know that if Apple had their way iPhones would always default to SMS/MMS instead.
Finally!!