Is this really worth a news story? The beta was just released a month ago and the full release isn’t until September. The public beta hasn’t even come out yet. iOS 26 still has a bunch of bugs so I think it’s safe to say they have other priorities right now.
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Apple's Promised RCS Upgrade Still Not Implemented in iOS 26 Beta
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Won’t see it then either. No carriers have adopted UP 3.0 - until they do, there’s nothing for the phone to work with. Carrier support will probably take months - it’s possible some will have it in the fall. Maybe.
Maybe iOS 28 if we’re lucky. I think this is one case where I’d like to see Apple take all the time they need. To get it right of course!
Like the robot vacuum support, the phone is dependent on someone else doing something first. In this case, it’s the phone carriers — if their endpoints don’t support UP 3.0, then not only is there no point in the phone software supporting it — there’s also no way to test whether it works. It’ll be months before we see this, and it’s not Apple or Google’s fault.
And it might only be available for customers of particular carriers at first too.
Many esims are data only which don’t support SMS/GMS. If you got an additional phone number, then it should have SMS but people won’t recognize you due to the new number.
Yep, "Apple's Promised RCS Upgrade Still Not Implemented in iOS 26 Beta"...
...translates to "features promised for upcoming upgrade still not available months before upcoming upgrade"
Like, semi-interesting news tidbit on a slow news day, but hardly something to get excited over.
Anyone who has family members on Android phones knows that RCS is the single best thing about iOS 18 and the updates in 26 will be even better.
The fact remains, not everyone uses the same kind of phone or messaging platform. Not everyone has the same level of familiarity or skill set when it comes to using different apps, etc.
Long live RCS on the iPhone!!!
The fact remains, not everyone uses the same kind of phone or messaging platform. Not everyone has the same level of familiarity or skill set when it comes to using different apps, etc.
Long live RCS on the iPhone!!!
Why are you going out of your way to change everything to a smaller, harder to read font?
Yeah, I think I'd rather not have Zuckerburg owning my messaging experience. And that's for more than the ads coming soon.
Regarding multiplatform multi device communication platforms, I feel like Microsoft teams has a good backend / server setup, but I wish their consumer frontend experience was a little more buttery smooth like telegram. Speaking of telegram, telegram is ok, but Microsoft teams backend kinda beats it with abilities to sign up beyond just phone numbers. For example if you want you can signup with email and password, login with sso, etc... it's got all the features in terms of ability to make edits at any time so it's almost like Google docs but with a chat structure. One issue with teams chat that annoys me continuously is that the microphone button, to leave voice notes is so tiny and requires such precision touch that it doesn't work so well across devices. If they could fix this, that would be ultimate. It beats discord too because it supports multiple accounts / has an account switcher. It beats telegram because message editing isn't limited to 48 hours in private chats so again it can somewhat function as a more chat focused "Google docs-ish" type of platform. It beats Whatsapp because it broadly supports multiple devices and platforms and backup is saved to the cloud across all devices. Maybe they could again, improve the consumer smoothness and microphone button in chat for leaving little voice snippet notes. On that end, *Google chat* actually wins because *it's* recently added voice message button *does* have the ability to *tap and release*, no hold down requires. But ms teams kinda beats Google chat because, in a world with a large percentage on the Google platforms, by using Google chat, it's kind of a risk regarding data segregation and stuff because when you sign in to one Google platform on and android or Chromebook, or even other platforms, it will then login to all the other Google apps with that account. If Google made a way to separate some of their apps so we could sign in without it signing into the other ones ,that could be a solution. But until then, it helps that the microsoft platform *isn't* Google. There's so much more to type but maybe I'll leave it at that for now.
The tldr is that *I* feel like ms teams free is essentially the most *broad capability* platform for cross platform chat that works and syncs across all devices and platforms.
Kinda saying this because rcs abilities feel relatively quaint compared to teams. But, improvements to any platform and service are appreciated.
The tldr is that *I* feel like ms teams free is essentially the most *broad capability* platform for cross platform chat that works and syncs across all devices and platforms.
Kinda saying this because rcs abilities feel relatively quaint compared to teams. But, improvements to any platform and service are appreciated.
As a European I say no thanks to WhatsApp. I only want iMessage, no Meta on my phone thank you very much.
Muting my RCS group chats still doesn't even work in the latest iOS 18. It's also constantly creating new threads of the same group in my messages list.
Give it a month. We may finally see it in a beta drop of iOS 26/iPadOS 26 by middle August 2025.
...which will take a lot of time, it seems. Updating IMS infrastructure to support UP3.0 seems like quite complicated task (upgrades, testing, interconnect, etc.). So for most cases iPhone users will have, for quite a long time, iOS26 with UP3.0 already implemented but not activated due to operators not being ready to handle it.
Didn’t even work properly on my iPhone. I thought it was Apple but it turned out to be an issue with my carrier (Fido) and my Pixel 8 Pro. They eventually sorted it out.
And that was the end of that. Once I had it working we all went back to using WhatsApp like we (and millions of others) have done for years when they want to chat across iOS/Android devices.
I don’t know anyone who uses RCS. I know at least 100 that use WhatsApp.
Sad part is, the ones crying about "who cares this doesn't matter" doesn't have an android user in their life they text. RCS with IOS18 made group messaging with android users sooo much nicer. Not everyone hates people based on their phone choices and some people like android more than iPhone. Never understood why some iPhone users get mad when a feature gets added just because they won't use it.
Yup. Apple’s like “China, you want this right now?”
China’s like “Nope.”
“Ok, let me know when you do.”
It's funny you say that because Google forces every Android Messenger user to use their own proprietary version of RCS and to send all their messages through Google servers so they can data capture on them.
The new eSim wouldn't allow SMS/RCS at all. It denied messaging. That *literally* has to do with interoperability as it is no longer "operable" on my device.
Google will support UP 3.0 with encryption as well once the carriers add support for 3.0. They added their own encryption because they got tired of waiting. But both Apple and Google will end up supporting the same encryption.
I'm well aware of how it works. Doesn't change the fact that RCS is a bad idea.
