iOS 18.4 Brings RCS Support to Google Fi, Mint Mobile and Other T-Mobile MVNOs

[SammyG7]

Works well for me with some people, really cool to see typing under a green bubble.

I could understand how this "weakens" Apple, not as big of a deal for a close friend or family member jump ship.

 

[DakotaGuy]

I have a Galaxy S24 Ultra on Verizon and I find RCS to work just fine with my iPhone friends. At this point 90% of messages I send are RCS whether going to an iPhone or Android phone. My brother and I have Android phones and my sister has an iPhone and our group chat works just fine. It’s a hell of a lot better than when we had to have an MMS group.

 

[segfaultdotorg]

Tim Apple,

Please make the RCS messages blue, or we'll sue for discrimination because minorities are more likely to have an Android device.

Sincerely,
America's Class Action Attorneys (TM)

 

[StoneJack]

all RCS messages are in rainbow color bubbles

 

[applefan8254]

Wouldn't that be nice! I mean were SIM cards THAT bad?

Yes please. I don't mind the idea of esims per se. I just wish hot swapping was more normalized. Apple has a built in method to do it for some carriers, but I wish it would come to all (especially mint please 😁)

 

[applefan8254]

-

 

[mdriftmeyer]

Another one of those, "this is progress? A feature? Who asked for this crap?" comes to mind.

 

[Nihilvor]

As a happy Tello subscriber I'm glad to see this become available. Hopefully it will work better than some the the above experiences with it.

This is great news.

 

[arc of the universe]

i think this MacRumors article is written in a most confusing way.

it makes sense to me that apple needs to make its iOS code able to handle RCS.
and, it also makes sense to me that on a carrier basis each individual carrier and network needs to make it work over their network and servers.

but the MacRumors article is written saying that "iOS18.4 brings RCS" to the carriers mentioned.
that is an odd way of saying that any carrier that wants to implement RCS can implement it if they make the necessary changes on their carrier side, and, according to MacRumors, these are the MVNO carriers using TMobile that can now use RCS.

 

[coolfactor]

My wife and I have had all kinds of trouble with RCS talking to Android people, even though we’re all T-Mobile. Hoping 18.4 fixes it.

Do you get "Not Delivered" errors? I've noticed that when my phone shows a Wi-Fi connection, but that connection to the outside world is not working properly, then RCS messages fail instantly. If I disconnect from Wi-Fi, the messages are delivered properly via Cellular Data.

If that describes your issue, then it's not RCS itself at fault, but Apple's "network fallback" logic not fully handling that situation of a non-working Wi-Fi (LAN/WAN) connection.

 

[coolfactor]

It makes me feel like maybe I’m not alone see how many issues other people are having using RCS. Group chats with android users keep splitting for me, I have 3 of the same group chat split out and random people responding to each one. It’s been a mess so far. Definitely was one of the biggest features I was looking forward to on iOS 18.

Now you can see why Apple proceeded cautiously with implementing RCS support. The protocol is a mess. Hopefully Apple's involvement will bring improvements.

 

[SebCohen]

Will it fix siri, though? Sources say no.

Found a picture of Siri

 

[SebCohen]

Honestly, most likely by way of a lacking technical comprehension, I fail to understand why RCS is such a pain in the computerulo and why it has to be turned on in the first place.

If it’s this…”intricate” and dependent on so many factors on both sides of the tin cans, by way of my same lacking technical knowledge, KNOW that a small change on either side will eventually break basic functionality of RCS.

So I can’t see how this is better for humanity and why Google did it this way? Why not just…you know..make a universal app a la WhatsApp that isn’t carrier dependent, but device agnostic.

 

[TimFL1]

No idea why this requires an iOS update to enable, but here we are...

Same, I thought support was more from the carrier's end

Why would this be tied to OS versions? RCS is standard, doesn’t seem to make sense that Apple would need to make network-specific OS changes.

i think this MacRumors article is written in a most confusing way.

it makes sense to me that apple needs to make its iOS code able to handle RCS.
and, it also makes sense to me that on a carrier basis each individual carrier and network needs to make it work over their network and servers.

but the MacRumors article is written saying that "iOS18.4 brings RCS" to the carriers mentioned.
that is an odd way of saying that any carrier that wants to implement RCS can implement it if they make the necessary changes on their carrier side, and, according to MacRumors, these are the MVNO carriers using TMobile that can now use RCS.

In order for RCS to work on iOS, your device needs to know what RCS endpoints to talk to (and your carrier telling you, that it‘s ok to use RCS by enabling a boolean). This information is stored inside a carrier profile.

Carrier profiles are usually updated with new iOS builds, but they can also be pushed out OTA independently (e.g. RCS was notably absent from a big german carrier on 18.0 release, but a few hours after the launch all users of said carrier received a prompt to update their carrier profile).

I guess they pushed this out via B2 as a testing bed + wouldn‘t surprise me if OTA carrier updates cost money, so barely anyone does it.


That being said, RCS is a goddamn mess on iOS and I wouldn‘t recommend it for anything but 1:1 conversations in good to great cellular signal regions.

 

[chineseguy38]

Useless. RCS message isn't supported by any telco in Australia still!

 

[techfreak23]

RCS rollout has been all over the place. I have AT&T and it didn't start working for me until I updated to 18.3.1 the other day. The previous 2 iOS 18 updates didn't work.

 

[cicalinarrot]

And all of this because Apple wanted teenagers with an Android phone to feel different, to feel like losers with a cheap phone and get peer-pressured into asking their parents to get them an iPhone, which would make them loyal Apple customers for life.

 

[mrochester]

Why are the mobile networks taking so long to provide this configuration? iOS came out months ago now.

 

[mazz0]

In order for RCS to work on iOS, your device needs to know what RCS endpoints to talk to (and your carrier telling you, that it‘s ok to use RCS by enabling a boolean). This information is stored inside a carrier profile.

Carrier profiles are usually updated with new iOS builds, but they can also be pushed out OTA independently (e.g. RCS was notably absent from a big german carrier on 18.0 release, but a few hours after the launch all users of said carrier received a prompt to update their carrier profile).

I guess they pushed this out via B2 as a testing bed + wouldn‘t surprise me if OTA carrier updates cost money, so barely anyone does it.


That being said, RCS is a goddamn mess on iOS and I wouldn‘t recommend it for anything but 1:1 conversations in good to great cellular signal regions.

And Apple controls that? I figured the networks controlled their profile and could push updates whenever they want.

 

[Pezimak]

I’ve reported a few posts but can the Mac Rumors staff please hit the iPad and iPhone forums? Looks like a bot is having a whale of a time making endless spam threads.

 

[Pezimak]

Good to see new features coming to MVNO’s, I haven’t used a MNO for years now, MVNO are far cheaper but you don’t get any perks of course.

 

[mrochester]

And Apple controls that? I figured the networks controlled their profile and could push updates whenever they want.

Yes I believe the carrier profile is administered by Apple but ultimately controlled by the network themselves. The carrier profile tells the phone what features the network is capable of I believe.

 

[pmhparis]

i think this MacRumors article is written in a most confusing way.

it makes sense to me that apple needs to make its iOS code able to handle RCS.
and, it also makes sense to me that on a carrier basis each individual carrier and network needs to make it work over their network and servers.

but the MacRumors article is written saying that "iOS18.4 brings RCS" to the carriers mentioned.
that is an odd way of saying that any carrier that wants to implement RCS can implement it if they make the necessary changes on their carrier side, and, according to MacRumors, these are the MVNO carriers using TMobile that can now use RCS.

You've visibly never worked in networking. RCS is not implemented as a single code base and each implementation has it's assumptions in grey areas that are not completely defined. You find when these assumptions are incompatible when you try to interoperate and discover what breaks. This is why the rollout of RCS to different operators takes time - to test and often for both sides (Apple & operators) to tweak their implementation to interoperate.

The people assuming that once Apple's RCS has been added to a iOS version that they will be able to use RCS globally need to look into the history of Samba. The initial implementation of Samba from Microsoft's SMB documentation took months. Finding where Microsoft's SMB implementations had bugs that caused problems for a documentation conformant SMB server and adding the bugs into Samba took YEARS.

 

[podycust]

what about Vodafone UK? 😂 😂

 

[WarmWinterHat]

Now you can see why Apple proceeded cautiously with implementing RCS support. The protocol is a mess. Hopefully Apple's involvement will bring improvements.

Maybe Apple could try using the latest version of RCS, v2.7 instead of v2.4, released six years ago.

I've personally had no problems with it. Wife is an android user and all has been well.