In a shocking crook , Apple has confirmed in a statement that it will wreak RCS to iPhone , greatly improving the experience of sending messages between iPhones and most Android phones . The annunciation come at a time when Apple is under unprecedented regulative and effectual pressure to interoperate better with non - Apple product and services and increased public outcry from users to do the same .
The instruction , direct to several medium sales outlet , reads :
Later next class , we will be adding support for RCS Universal Profile , the standard as presently 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 cover to be the good and most strong messaging experience for Apple substance abuser .
RCS is the new message standard that has been heavy pushed by Google and take by the GSM Association , a govern standards body for the wireless industry . It is meant to replace SMS and MMS as the default carrier - found messaging solution , taking it up to modern standard in an interoperable , gimmick - and - political platform agnostic way . While RCS is not undivided to Android , it is supported in the message client for most Android phone and Apple ’s reluctance to support the criterion has made it a de - facto “ Android only ” technology .
Apple toldTechRadarthat it wo n’t be sustain “ proprietary file name extension ” that seek to add encryption on top of RCS and hopes , alternatively , to work with the GSM Association to add encryption to the standard . On Android phones some apps ( such as Google Messages ) sustenance encryption while others do not .
We do n’t know precisely how RCS will work on the iPhone , but the most likely scenario is that RCS clients will still bet like messaging with SMS clients , aka green bubbles , while iMessage users will still be send with blue bubbles . Apple will still desire to differentiate between messages station with Apple devices and those institutionalise with Android phones since many feature article wo n’t be underpin through RCS . But they ’ll be able-bodied to co - exist and a single green house of cards wo n’t mishandle up the whole group chat .
We have no idea when “ after next yr ” is , but that phrase makes it sound like this is an iOS 18 feature due for release in the fall . We ’ll probably learn more at WWDC in June , but in a nutshell , RCS support means that when you use Messages to communicate with someone who has an Android telephone set ( or there is an Android exploiter in the mathematical group text ) , you ’ll get feature like :
The RCS Universal Profile has gone through a number of updates in the last few years to add together characteristic and capacity , and we do n’t yet know which variation Apple intends to support , or which optional feature it will adopt . you could probably expect everything on the inclination above , but perhaps not some of RCS ’s more modern or recent features .
The move is something of an about - facial expression for Apple , which has n’t shown any leaning to adopt RCS . At a conference last September , in fact , Tim Cooktold an attendeethat the best answer for blurry photos charge from iPhones to Android phones is to “ Buy your Mom an iPhone . ”
As for iMessage , it will still put up more features , including the ability to edit and unsend message and ranking privacy and security . In other discussion , there will still be an iMessage vantage , but the experience for iPhone users who send messages to those using Android telephone set will improve greatly — even of they ’ll still take to calculate at green bubbles .
