Samsung and other Android devices have supported RCS (Rich Communication Services) for several years, and finally, iPhones are joining the party. Apple devices with iOS 18.1 also support the service, which is the cross-platform successor to SMS and MMS. Samsung posted several videos showcasing its benefits. The new standard allows for quick sharing of high-quality photos, easy reactions to other messages and enhanced group chats with a simple click. For RCS messaging to work, Android and iOS users who wish to communicate together must have Google Messages installed and RCS...

One of the big reasons behind the push for RCS adoption is that it can send high quality images, much higher than what MMS can. Soon, the most popular RCS app on Android, Google Messages, will gain the ability to send original quality photos. This is a new setting in the Photo Picker, a toggle that says either HD or HD+. Not the most informative names, but once you actually tap it, you get more descriptive options: one reduces the image size (and quality), the other sends the photo at original quality (at the expense of using more data). This was discovered by the Android Authority...

Google has been pressing Apple to adopt RCS for years and even when Cupertino relented (perhaps when it became clear that the EU would get involved), Google still had the audacity to poke fun at Apple. But maybe Google should be focusing on its own garden instead of trying to be humorous. Did you know that Wear OS smartwatches with LTE cannot send RCS messages? Well, they can’t – RCS messaging from the watch only works when it is connected to a phone. That will change with an upcoming update to the Messages app. In a teardown of Google Messages v20240926 beta, the Android Authority team...

The latest ad in the #BestPhonesForever series is now out, and Google is once again trolling Apple. Or rather, to be specific, a Pixel is trolling an iPhone. They are #BestPhonesForever, and Google is using this format to mock Apple's mobile devices in various ways. This time around, it's about RCS. The messaging standard has finally been adopted by Apple with the release of iOS 18 earlier this week, following years of pressure from Google. So now iPhones and Android devices can finally share high quality images and videos with each other via texts. This, of course, is mainly...

Editing messages in chat apps has been a thing for many years now, but we finally get to see some of the biggest messaging clients adopting it. Instagram recently rolled out an editing function in its chats along with Facebook's Messenger and WhatsApp. And now, Google is making it possible for RCS messages as well. How editing works The new feature will allow you to edit a message you've sent in the last 15 minutes, and the recipient will be able to see the original by tapping and holding on to the message itself. The tricky part is that all participants in the conversation should...

Last November, hell froze over and Apple finally caved and agreed to support RCS on iPhones, after many, many years in which Google and others have been asking it to. RCS brings iMessage-like features to messages sent in between any devices that support it, regardless of who makes them. At that time, Apple only said that RCS would arrive on iPhones "later next year", so "later in 2024", that is. Today Google has pinpointed a more specific launch time frame: "fall of 2024". That sounds a lot like a very strong hint at RCS making its debut in iOS 18, which will be announced on June 10 but...

Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman covered some new rumors surrounding the upcoming iOS 18 release in his latest newsletter. According to Gurman’s sources, iOS 18 is seen as one of the biggest software updates in the history of iOS. One of the expected big new updates is support for Rich Communication Services (RCS) in the native Messages app. Apple already announced it will bring RCS support to iPhones in 2024 which open up cross-platform features between iOS and Android phones. These include higher res media sharing, improved group chats, read receipts, typing indicators, location sharing and...

RCS is officially big. 1 billion monthly active users big, in fact. Google announced the milestone today, and to celebrate it's giving the Messages app 7 new features. These will apparently "help your personality shine through". They won't make RCS bubbles blue on iOS, however. RCS, in case you've been living under a rock, is a new standard that's supposed to replace the antiquated SMS and MMS, Google says, although those are still used as backup, so not that much "replace" as "enhance". Anyway, the point is it's like iMessage but for Android phones. Google has been pushing it a lot...

Google has quietly added support for Android's new Ultra HDR Image Format in Google Messages when sending messages over RCS. Images in this format when sent over RCS will maintain their meta data and will display correctly on the receiving device. This was first noticed by TheSpAndroid through the inclusion of the flag bugle.support_ultra_hdr inside the application APK. The authors of the blog post confirmed through crowdsourced testing that the feature indeed works on Google Pixel 8 devices when sending images over RCS. The Ultra HDR Image Format is a recent inclusion in...

The color of chat bubbles is extremely important to people in the US for some reason. Blue is good, green is poor - or something like that, right? We don't know, we're from Europe, and over here people have WhatsApp and Telegram and Facebook Messenger. But in the US, bubbles matter. And they will continue to, unfortunately, even with today's groundbreaking announcement from Apple. The company finally caved and revealed that it plans to adopt RCS in iOS from next year. RCS, as you may know, is the iMessage-like standard that works on top of SMS. But, importantly, it's not iMessage....