Apple is finally bringing RCS messaging to the iPhone

&gt; Right now, when people on iOS and Android message each other, the service falls back to SMS — photos and videos are sent at a lower quality, messages are shortened, and importantly, conversations are not end-to-end encrypted like they are in iMessage.<p>They will still not be end-to-end encrypted in RCS. They will just be encrypted in transit, but your carrier (or whoever is running whatever server in an RCS architecture) can read all your messages.<p>There is talk that Google&#x27;s got some kind of extension that adds E2EE to RCS but others will be well informed on it and can add to my message.<p>I&#x27;m blissfully happy with iMessage. For the non-Apple people, we&#x27;ve been using WhatsApp for nearly a decade.<p>But what does this do for OTP messages, etc? I&#x27;ll have to check if Twilio automatically uses RCS if you send a message to a supported number. I do like the idea of all messages being encrypted in transit at least (SMS is not).

&gt; Messages from Android phones show up as green bubbles in iMessage chats, and chaos ensues.<p>This is not true -- messages from Android users show up as grey, the same as messages from iMessage. Messages from you *TO* Android users show up as green. I don&#x27;t know why people keep getting this wrong.<p>That&#x27;s why it&#x27;s always a pain to figure out why a group chat is showing up green all of a sudden; you can&#x27;t tell who brought the Android to the party.

Hard for me to see Google as the good guys in this RCS situation when Google Chat is separate from Messages and Google Voice is almost totally neglected.

I hope the wider adoption of RCS will mean Google opening it up to other messaging clients on Android. If only because it&#x27;d be nice to fall back to something, anything, a bit better than SMS (most of my regular contacts use Signal these days). I just don&#x27;t want to be locked into Google&#x27;s client.

they still do white text on a lime green background despite every accessibility guidance to the contrary. if I used white text on a lime green background at my job I would be reprimanded. this is malicious compliance.

Every time I read about the various spats and incompatibilities of non-standard message systems, I am extra grateful for email.

I see a lot of confusing chatter about RCS (and maybe that’s the point).<p>Does anyone actually have a good write up on E2E encryption and whether or not all messages will actually go through google’s servers in plaintext? As in, not Google marketing.<p>Seen a lot of chatter and it seems like it’s is complicated on both fronts.<p>Only mildly worse (depending on the answer) than sending an SMS already but really makes me question the push for it in the first place

The messages will still be green apparently.

I hope and expect it to work over Wi-Fi without a cellular signal.

Nothing new in this article. While starts with, &quot;The long-awaited day is here: Apple has announced that its Messages app will support RCS in iOS 18.&quot; no such day is here. They previously announced it was coming later this year (which meant iOS 18) and we are still waiting for that future unknown date this year. And still no details on how exactly will work. So while very excited for it, no new news here yet.

Sad that EU is (likely) banning e2e encryption (&quot;chat control&quot;) before RCS ever got an accepted standard for it.<p>To their defense, that was what Apple key saying was their blocker on RCS. Some reasonable truth to it. I don&#x27;t know how far or how hard Google went trying to make their extensions standards; AFAIK it&#x27;s not like the web where this work &amp; activity on it is easily seen.

Confused european here:<p>So SMS goes over the phone network, online chat programs (like Discord) go over their own servers obviously, but what does RCS and iMessage go through?<p>Google&#x27;s and Apple&#x27;s servers on the internet? The phone system, seeing they&#x27;re SMS-based?<p>Also, if I&#x27;m in the SMS messaging app, I expect my messages to be SMS, not internet-based?

What is the state of RCS in European countries?<p>I live in Sweden. Do carriers like Telia etc support it? Do they have their own servers or do they let Google handle it?

How can this article not mention &quot;encryption&quot; even once when that&#x27;s the major point of contention?

ugh, RCS is the worst. I&#x27;m all for interoperability but can we at least use something that isn&#x27;t so awful?

about fricken time. So obnoxious they make regular communication so fricken difficult.

the only silver lining here is that rcs can be used by regulators (say, in the eu) to allow for interoperability across platforms.

Sure wish Apple would now make it available in a Windows app, or at least in browser. It would be so helpful to be able to text from my Windows machine through my iPhone.

RCS is out-of-the box an unencrypted messaging protocol.<p>The EU forcing Apple to adopt a cleartext protocol like RCS is deeply suspicious. Interoperability will force disclosure of message contents to the state and carrier.<p>(unless your phone vendor has implemented encryption in their implementation. Ie: optimistic encryption aka can’t trust if it is truly working)<p>Use encrypted messaging protocols — iMessage, signal, WhatsApp…<p>Tell the government and the carriers to pound sand and &lt;encrypted&gt;……

FaceTime next!

I am vaguely surprised that phone messaging apps are not a two level architecture. level 1 the ui would manage your contacts and display and dispatch messages. then you have a well defined interface and level 2, I guess you would call them plugins, knows how to authenticate you to to a service and deliver and receive messages. The messaging vendor would supply the plugin and the os vendor would supply the ui.<p>Only vaguely surprised because, while this could be better for the end user and interoperation, it reduces lock in and who wants that? &#x2F;s