If you're texting another iPhone user, iMessage is a great experience. But things fall apart if you text an Android user. As first reported by 9to5Mac, that should improve next year when Apple brings RCS to the iPhone.
You've probably heard of the great Blue vs. Green bubble debate. Unfortunately, being a "green bubble" can come with a certain stigma and accusations of friends cutting Android users out of group chats altogether. That's because if the person you're texting isn't on an iPhone, iOS will fall back to SMS and MMS, the ancient method for texting.
Those two methods don't support many modern features, leading to compressed photos and videos that can look like garbage and sub-part group chats. There are security concerns as well since SMS doesn't support any form of encryption. RCS, which isn't all that new either, promises to fix a lot of those issues. With RCS, you can communicate over Wi-Fi and send higher-quality media, audio messages, and larger file sizes. Correctly implemented, it could also add some amount of encryption: more than SMS but likely less than what iMessage currently offers.
Google has been pushing Apple to adopt RCS for years and has tried to improve texting between Android and iPhone. But it can only do so much without Apple. Even Nothing is going to extraordinary lengths to "bring iMessage to Android." At the same time, the EU recently designated iMessage a "gatekeeper app" required to open up to other systems. While Apple is fighting that designation, it made a surprise announcement today. The company will bring RCS to iPhones sometime later next year.
If you communicating from Apple device to Apple device, iMessage will still be the standard. Try to contact an Android device, and the iPhone will "fall back" to RCS, much like it currently does to SMS and MMS.
Apple didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. But in a statement given to 9to5Mac, an Apple spokesperson had this to say:
"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."
It's unclear exactly when RCS will reach iPhones or how long it will take to roll out once Apple begins the process. And we still have plenty of questions about how that implementation will look. But given Tim Cook's insistence just last year that Apple users weren't asking the company to put "a lot of energy" into RCS, a lot seems to have changed in a short time.
