RCS in iOS 18: What You Need to Know About Apple's Android Messaging Overhaul

[Treq]

see, even you are confused

currently, if you have Joseph in your contacts that has a phone number tied to a pixel phone and an email tied to an iPad with iMessage, iOS will default to iMessage instead of the pixel phone. Joseph won't get the message until he checks his iPad.

you have to manually separate Joseph in your contacts app. Joseph pixel and Joseph iPad so you can properly send a message to pixel by default when you type in the name. either that or you have to make sure to tap on the disclosure button on the right and manually select the pixel number to send the message

if you don't understand this, clearly it's difficult for many.

You don't have to separate them. Ive had this problem with my sister's android phone and her iPad. Just make sure you are texting to her phone number. If you text to her email address it will fall back to that, but if you start with the number it will stay on the number. If you start with the email, it will stay with the email until you change it. It can get annoying when I send something to her iPad for the higher quality, then forget to switch back. It's the same if they had two phone numbers.

 

[truthsteve]

You don't have to separate them. Ive had this problem with my sister's android phone and her iPad. Just make sure you are texting to her phone number. If you text to her email address it will fall back to that, but if you start with the number it will stay on the number. If you start with the email, it will stay with the email until you change it. It can get annoying when I send something to her iPad for the higher quality, then forget to switch back. It's the same if they had two phone numbers.

I've had to separate them because I started with iMessage. even if you type in the phone number and tap the name, it defaults to a previous iMessage conversation.

 

[usmaak]

RCS messages will be more secure, but won't be end-to-end encrypted as iMessage conversations are, at least not until updates are made to the standard.

One of my main reasons for wanting this was security between devices. Ahh well. At least maybe people on android receiving videos from me won’t have a blurry mess.

 

[Aoligei]

> iMessage conversations will continue to be denoted with blue chat bubbles, and RCS messages will continue to be green

YES, this is exactly what I care. I know my phone with proud blue is better than people on other side of world.

Good to know that you are proud iPhone user.

And love how you see all Android users are inferior beings.

Please be yourself and enjoying your worldview while I am laughing my ass off

Send by Xiaomi, Pixel, OnePlus, Moto, Samsung and iPhone user.

 

[DakotaGuy]

except before rcs, it was already confusing

if I wanted to text someone that has an android phone and an iPad, iMessage defaults to iMessage instead of sms.

so when you text 'where are you', unless that person is carrying an iPad in their coat, they won't get that message.

now with rcs, you have a third category of people to worry about. you have iMessage groups, you have rcs groups, and you have sms groups. each have different rules of what you can and cannot do.

you don't just 'text'.

I have an iPad and an Android phone. Not sure why it works for me, but maybe it's because I don't have a phone number associated with my iPad. I only get text messages on my phone.

 

[DakotaGuy]

Do android devices get different color bubbles? I suspect most iPhone users don’t care. Android users might but that’s not Apple’s problem.

Yes they do. SMS is light blue. RCS is a much darker aqua blue. It's a noticeable difference.

 

[MuppetGate]

I really hope they'll figure out end-to-end encryption soon after the initial implementation.

Given Apple’s obsession with privacy, I don’t think it will arrive until E2EE is sorted out.

 

[MuppetGate]

Apple also said they were going to enable sideloading this year and that never happened so I'm not holding my breath.

When did Apple ever say that?

 

[MuppetGate]

Tim Cook's mediocrity strikes again. If both SMS and RCS messages are green, how will we know if the message is SMS or RCS?

Why not make RCS messages a different color, i.e., not green nor blue, but rather a third color? Oh, I forgot—that's far too logical and user-friendly for Tim Cook's mediocre MBA mind to comprehend.

I’m constantly amazed at the number of people who think Tim Cook is responsible for picking out the colour schemes in Apple bathrooms.

 

[fabbydabby1]

see, even you are confused

currently, if you have Joseph in your contacts that has a phone number tied to a pixel phone and an email tied to an iPad with iMessage, iOS will default to iMessage instead of the pixel phone. Joseph won't get the message until he checks his iPad.

you have to manually separate Joseph in your contacts app. Joseph pixel and Joseph iPad so you can properly send a message to pixel by default when you type in the name. either that or you have to make sure to tap on the disclosure button on the right and manually select the pixel number to send the message

if you don't understand this, clearly it's difficult for many.

What are you on about
Google RCS works similar to iMessage in that it’s over cellular & WiFi so if the android phone uses RCS they should receive it
If they don’t have RCS then they won’t & if it still doesn’t work after that then that’s on Apple for not giving the iPad txt messaging abilities.

 

[fabbydabby1]

Or that's good to know, I'm on EE so should be supported. Thanks.

Yes I read a thing from o2 that said we are going to use google’s RCS because all major networks are going to implement it so will be easier & it will improve the experience for everyone.

 

[fabbydabby1]

Given Apple’s obsession with privacy, I don’t think it will arrive until E2EE is sorted out.

This is not about privacy why they are adding the RCS profile. This is more to stop the European Union calling iMessage a gatekeeper app. So if Apple make it compatible with google RCS then the theory will be it takes away that argument so they won’t have to open iMessage up.

 

[headlessmike]

According to the OP, the color for RCS messages will be green. I edited my previous post to include a quote of the relevant portion of the OP.

I cannot find any source for this claim, so it sounds like pure speculation by the author.

 

[fabbydabby1]

Not gonna happen in the US now clearly. Might happen in Europe…

Oh that’s strange when I just read that the 3 major carriers in the US are using RCS messages.
This RCS profile has to do with the European Union calling iMessage a gatekeeper app in that Apple deliberately make it incompatible.
And with major carriers around the world Apple are not going to have a choice in doing it.

 

[fabbydabby1]

I cannot find any source for this claim, so it sounds like pure speculation by the author.

Nothing is going to change in regards to how it looks it’s just going to function better by for example now txting an android phone over WiFi.
On the face of it an Apple user it not going to see any difference

 

[IskarJarak]

I guess it's a local Bulgarian thing (and I guess many of you don't even know where Bulgaria is on the map ) but here a messenger called Viber is very popular and even some big companies use it to avoid SMS charges and sending their messages through Viber, such as e.g. delivery companies sending delivery status updates, banks sending statements and transaction notifications, etc. It's very bloated app that I hate but is still much better than WhatsApp and has been offering end-to-end encryption and edit/delete of sent messages for ages. Not sure if it's popular outside Bulgaria though...

It is, it's the same in Serbia. It's popular across all Balkan country's...

 

[fabbydabby1]

I noticed on a family members pixel phone when you go into messages settings.
There is an option you can switch on that says if message doesn’t send you can revert to sms/mms.

 

[Jovijoker]

F@ck RCS!🤮

 

[fabbydabby1]

F@ck RCS!🤮

A bit sad your attitude about a piece of software

 

[jlc1978]

I just explained how iPhone users have to care.

Not really. Most of them never encounter the edge case you described, which can be fixed by turning iMessage off on the iPad. Even so, most iPhone users, unlike some on this forum, don't care about bubble colors. Messaging works for them and that's all they care about.

I’m constantly amazed at the number of people who think Tim Cook is responsible for picking out the colour schemes in Apple bathrooms.

Blue for employee's, and Green for visitor's, bathrooms

 

[usmaak]

The only beneficiary is Google, Android users don't need this, they use WhatsApp or other third party apps, Apple users certainly don't need this, as long as my messages don't touch the Google server, I'm cool with Apple holding a helping hand out

I’m sure that you all have hundreds of friends that you message with all of the time. I don’t. I have maybe two dozen people that I text with, with half being on Android and half using iPhones. None of us use whatsapp. I even tried getting some to use it because sending videos between iPhone and android turns them into a blurry mess. And any time I send a picture, it takes the message a while to completely send, though to be fair that could be T-Mobile having an issue. Nobody was interested and I finally just uninstalled it. I welcome this change and have been hoping for it. I liked the idea of end-to-end encryption as well, though apparently that won’t be a thing, at least in the beginning.

 

[Aoligei]

I’m sure that you all have hundreds of friends that you message with all of the time. I don’t. I have maybe two dozen people that I text with, with half being on Android and half using iPhones. None of us use whatsapp. I even tried getting some to use it because sending videos between iPhone and android turns them into a blurry mess. And any time I send a picture, it takes the message a while to completely send, though to be fair that could be T-Mobile having an issue. Nobody was interested and I finally just uninstalled it. I welcome this change and have been hoping for it. I liked the idea of end-to-end encryption as well, though apparently that won’t be a thing, at least in the beginning.

I honestly rather use RCS than downloading bunch of IM apps. I literally don’t want download WhatsApp, Snapchat, Facebook Messenger, Telegram etc. If text message does the job and I have unlimited text message, I will use Google Message (if I am on pixel) or Apple message app (if i am on iPhone)

 

[JosephAW]

Why do I have this feeling that when iOS 18 comes out with RCS they're going to drop all iMessage and FaceTime support for older devices they can't run the latest iOS version.
I remember when they did that to us with iOS 6, you had to have something that ran iOS 7 or newer in order to continue to use FaceTime and iMessage.

 

[ThomasJL]

I’m constantly amazed at the number of people who think Tim Cook is responsible for picking out the colour schemes in Apple bathrooms.

Tim Cook has the power to order people to make changes, but he doesn't use that power to make changes to user-unfriendly aspects of Apple's software. That's because he doesn't care about products nor users, and instead just cares about making as much money as possible. Walter Isaacson said that Steve Jobs complained that Tim Cook is not a products person.

Jobs was constantly ordering people to make changes so that software is as user-friendly as possible. Cook doesn't care. As long as people will fork out cash, Cook is fine with shipping user-unfriendly software and hardware.

 

[headlessmike]

Why do I have this feeling that when iOS 18 comes out with RCS they're going to drop all iMessage and FaceTime support for older devices they can't run the latest iOS version.
I remember when they did that to us with iOS 6, you had to have something that ran iOS 7 or newer in order to continue to use FaceTime and iMessage.

What? I have an iPod Touch on iOS 6 and FaceTime and iMessage still work fine on it to this day. There were some certificate issues that iOS 7 fixed, but devices unable to upgrade past iOS 6 got a special update to restore this functionality as well.