Apple made a surprising announcement on Thursday that it will support the rich communication services (RCS) standard for text messaging. An iOS update is expected to bring some iMessage-exclusive messaging features to conversations involving Android devices. The announcement was made through a statement obtained by 9to5Mac. “Later next year, we will be adding support for RCS Universal Profile, the standard as currently published by the GSM Association,” an Apple spokesperson said. “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.”
For a considerable amount of time, Apple has been under pressure to implement RCS. In 2022, Android initiated a campaign urging Apple to “fix texting” by introducing RCS to iPhone-to-Android conversations, which had previously lacked end-to-end encryption. A month later, Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, cheekily informed Android users that purchasing an iPhone was the better option than bridging the two technologies. Despite this, Google, the parent company of Android, continued to criticize Apple for sticking with the antiquated short messaging service (SMS) and multimedia messaging service (MMS) standards rather than boldly moving forward.
If the new mock iMessage capabilities on the Nothing Phone 2 were not enough to convince Apple to adopt RCS, then the company’s recent shift in tone from petty to serious may have been. To be clear, iMessage will continue to function as usual for conversations between iPhones and other iPhones;
RCS adoption will only impact conversations between an iPhone and one or more Android phones. Although these conversations have traditionally relied on SMS and MMS, RCS will replace them when available, making SMS and MMS only backup options.
While RCS will offer more secure encryption than SMS and MMS, Apple says its level of encryption still is not as secure as the end-to-end encryption used within iMessage. Additionally, for those who are very particular about the color of their text message bubbles, it is unclear at this time whether RCS messages will remain green.
RCS iPhone-to-Android conversations will enable a few long-awaited features, including location-sharing, read receipts, typing indicators, and higher-quality media sharing.