Edit: NOTE, I am the receiver of the texts.
So many people asking me to have my wife do something different on her end.
Beloved, she is on iPhone because she doesn’t want to do anything “weird.” She is texting from her phone number using her texting app. That’s what’s going to happen.
Now, why can’t I get iMessage on my android phone? If it’s just a messenger app why not make it available for Android?
I’d use it.
It’s because Apple has refused to adopt new messaging standards like RCS (not that Google is doing that much of a better job), but it’s purposefully broken interoperability to force people into buying into product ecosystems (iPhone vs. Android) to make you stick with one and get stuck on it.
It’s stupid anti-competitive and I freakin’ hate it.
Literally doesn’t have to be this way, it’s a choice (mostly by Apple, but once again doesn’t mean Google is better).
https://www.theverge.com/2024/6/15/24178470/apple-rcs-support-wwdc-announcement-android-imessage
https://www.tomsguide.com/how-to-switch-on-rcs-messaging-in-ios-18
Here’s a walkthrough to ensure RCS is enabled on your wife’s iPhone, once iOS 18 drops in the next month or so.
A lot of RCS is using Google Jibe, it’s one of the ways they were able to roll it out so fast not necessarily with carrier support. I can’t fault them too much for not immediately embracing it. Based on the Toms Hardware link it looks like they are depending on carrier hubs. For me that means I may not get support for a long time as an MVNO user.
The Google proprietary extensions in their implementation of RCS is honestly pretty crappy imho as well. Neither of these companies are “good guys” in terms of RCS standards.
Ah, so Google is taking the Microsoft approach to embrace and extend, but don’t share. Gross.
Eh, no one else is doing anything to provide support apart from Google either. Anyone else could do their own thing, no one is prevented from their own support. But very few companies and carriers even began to develop support for RCS, even after the Universal Profile. That is why Google developed their own support and built that support into the native app.
Verizon had their own RCS support via a proprietary carrier-specific app that never worked with anyone outside Verizon as far as I remember, and they dropped it in favor of Google’s option as soon as that was available. Samsung had their own RCS support in their proprietary Messaging app, also dropped because Google provides the same support on all of their products and Samsung doesn’t have to do anything or support it in any way. Google now provides an option for all Android devices specifically because almost no one was adding support on their own.
Anyone can, no one else will, because they have no reason to. The average user doesn’t care whether it’s Google, their carrier, or the manufacturer providing support for sending high quality photos to their friend’s phone number as long as it works.
That’s why I’m kinda hoping Apple would adopt standard RCS and then the ball’s on Google for not cooperating.
Apple has indicated that it’s implementing standard RCS. That means no encryption and no weird additions.
They’re trying to get end to end encryption into the RCS standard, but the committees making that standard also have a lot of people from law enforcement agencies, so that’s never going to happen. If it does, assume there’s a backdoor in the standard.
Their proprietary extensions are for the same reason Apple took forever to implement it.
RCS still sucks.
Don’t forget to add in the primary reason they don’t want to implement it is exactly because of comment’s like OPs, because it makes it look like Android phones are the problem. Most people assume that it’s because it’s an android it doesn’t work right, and so everyone should just have iPhones. Why fix what is already great marketing for them, even if it is a complete lie?
RCS is quite terrible. Very few carriers still host RCS services. The only reason it works is because Google decided “fuck it, if you guys won’t provide RCS, we’ll just set up our own server for everyone to use”.
My country has a total of 0 carriers that run RCS servers. Only Vodafone had them, and they shut them down, because nobody used them. Everyone who uses RCS here uses Google’s servers. Wikipedia still lists carriers that have shut down RCS services so even the limited list of RCS capable carriers looks bigger than it is in reality.
I don’t know how Apple will implement RCS, but if they use carrier services (which, by the way, often are rented from Google as well), there’s a good chance RCS still won’t work. The only reliable way for Apple to add RCS is to copy what Google did and host an RCS server themselves.
I’m glad Apple is finally adding support, but I don’t blame them given how absolutely terrible the uptake among carriers was.
Honestly, I’d rather have Apple open up iMessage than for them to enable RCS, but regulatory pressure from China has made them include RCS anyway, so they might as well support it in the rest of the world.
To be fair, this is only a problem in countries where texting never died. In a lot of countries, apps like WhatsApp have taken over the role of the standard messenger over a decade ago, and everyone has one or more messaging apps they actually use.
The funny thing about RCS is that it’s not encrypted, and is designed to be run in carrier networks, where law enforcement agencies can read every message sent back and forth. If RCS had been taken up rather than WhatsApp or Line or any other competitor, our privacy situation would actually be much worse. In a way, I’m kind of thankful for RCS being so terrible.
Google will also try to block you from their RCS servers if they detect you’re rooted, causing your messages to be silently downgraded. It’s pretty bad.
They have to if they want to support payments over RCS (it’s in the spec). Gotta love telecom specifications!
Luckily that stuff isn’t too hard to get around