AT&T and Google have introduced that every one Android telephones on the community will use Google’s Android Messages app for SMS and RCS companies. T-Cellular made the very same partnership cope with Google in March, which leaves Verizon as the one US service who hasn’t dedicated to switching its clients to Android Messages by default.
Together with the change to Messages comes one other essential shift: actual interoperability with RCS on different networks. AT&T has supported RCS for awhile now, however that assist has been as haphazard because it was half-hearted. The brand new deal additionally signifies that AT&T clients will profit from the rollout of end-to-end encryption for RCS that Google is rolling out to all clients this 12 months (that rollout has already begun, the truth is).
Google has been pushing RCS as its default texting answer for Android for a while now, touting it as an open customary that any service can simply undertake as the subsequent technology of SMS. RCS has plenty of benefits over SMS: there are not any character limits, it will possibly ship bigger information, it will possibly present typing indicators, supply higher group chats, Wi-Fi assist, and supply end-to-end encryption for one-on-one chats.
Sure, it’s complicated — blame Google
When Android Messages detects that you just’re texting with one other cellphone that helps RCS, your textual content entry window will change to say that you’re sending a “Chat” and that you’ve got “Chat options” enabled. This isn’t the identical factor as Google Chat, the corporate’s different messaging service. Sure, it’s complicated — blame Google.
In any case, regardless of Google’s finest efforts, carriers have been gradual to undertake RCS. In reality, in October 2019 they introduced a doomed try and type an RCS consortium that went nowhere. Google finally needed to take issues into its personal arms, years into an overlong transition by providing RCS companies on to any Android consumer.
In all, the RCS Chat rollout has been an enormous mess due to politics, company fights, and plain outdated complicated Google messaging app methods.
Now, with these service offers, Google has gone one step additional to make it a real default. Sadly, it’s only a step. Verizon might want to get on board, too, as will one other large firm: Apple. The iPhone doesn’t assist RCS and Apple has but to make a peep about whether or not it can.
