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Abstract

one who can’t stand group chats, and wished to leave it without hurting anyone’s feelings–you were out of luck. With RCS you can do all of those things, including quietly leaving the chat without having to tell all the other participants that they need to make a new chat group… without you in it this time!</p><h2 id="93bb">Reactions</h2><p id="1261">Reactions are that fancy feature where if you hold down a message for a second, a menu with a few emojis pops up. Usually you can choose from the heart, laughing face, crying face, or thumbs up/down emojis to react to that particular message. It’s a feature that can bring a more natural conversational flow to your messages.</p><h2 id="edf7">Send/Receive Larger Files</h2><p id="4624">With RCS, you can send larger files to others who are also using RCS. Finally, you can send longer messages, clearer pictures and videos that don’t look like they were recorded on a flip phone!</p><h2 id="b76f">Encryption</h2><p id="45bb">Finally, the most important feature–encryption. With privacy and security concerns always being at the forefront of our minds, encryption is a no brainer!</p><p id="e0b4">Sending and receiving SMS/MMS messages have always gone through your carrier. That means messages leave your phone, go to your mobile carrier, and then the carrier sends it along to the recipient (whoever you were sending the message to in the first place). This means that your text messages could be intercepted and read during any of those stops between you hitting send and your message getting to its final destination.</p><p id="e899">With RSC, your message is sent through your Wi-Fi, or data connection. It’s also encrypted (randomized) as soon as you hit send. It then stays encrypted until it’s delivered to the person you sent the message to. If an outside person tried to intercept your message, they wouldn’t be able to read it because of that randomization.</p><h2 id="4ee8">But, there’s one tiny problem</h2><p id="8a06">Before we get too excited, there is currently one glaring issue that needs to be addressed. That issue is none other than APPLE.</p><p id="cefb">RCS is on the path to become the new standard for text messages going forward. SMS/MMS texts are too outdated, unreliable and frankly unsafe to keep being used as the primary way text messages are sent and received. Apple, however, refuses to

Options

incorporate the RCS protocol into their iMessage.</p><p id="9bf9">The reason for this? The leading guess on why Apple is refusing to move forward with the RCS protocol is that they are afraid it will be bad for their bottom line. One of the major draws to iOS — at least here in America — is iMessage. Apple’s iMessage has been superior in every way with its default messaging service.</p><p id="2ec6">All the features listed above for RCS have been standard in iMessage for years. Because of that, consumers flock to the iPhone for the richer messaging experience. It is such a phenomenon it’s been dubbed the “Blue Bubble vs Green Bubble Effect” With Apples Blue bubble you had all the above features, and talking to anyone with a green bubble (Android users) was choppy, disconnected and frankly a painful experience.</p><p id="879c"><i>I should note this little blue bubble vs green bubble war has caused quite a bit of bullying towards the owners of the green bubbles.</i></p><p id="defd">Adding RCS would in theory eliminate some of those barriers and could potentially lead to some curious iPhone users to take a walk on the wild side and snatch up an Android phone at their next upgrade.</p><p id="796f">It also needs more than a brief mentioning, that Apple–a company that prides itself with being the “safer” and the more “privacy conscience” of the two major OS companies- seems to have no issues with leaving their users to default back to the wholly unsafe and unsecure landscape that is SMS/MMS messaging whenever they message a friend or family member not on iPhone.</p><p id="2d73">So the problem remains that until Apple decides to play nicely with others, RCS will only be available to Android users. This new messaging will work between Android phones, as iMessage does with iPhone users. If you, and an Android user are talking to another Android user who has RCS enabled, you will have all the nifty new features right there at your fingertips–if you’re messaging an iPhone user… your message will be kicked back to the defaulted SMS/MMS protocol.</p><p id="4364">Read every story from Leigh Robbins (and thousands of other writers on Medium).<a href="https://medium.com/@lrobbins3/membership">Your membership fee directly supports Leigh Robbins and other writers you read. You’ll also get full access to every story on Medium.</a></p></article></body>

RCS Text Messages: What It Is and Is It Really Better?

A breakdown of what RCS is, and what it means for you–the user

Until recently, unless you were a tech nerd, you probably hadn’t heard of RCS messaging before. The reason you haven’t? Your service carrier didn’t want you to.

The RCS protocol has been in development for years, being pushed by Google. The end goal of this project was to create a newer, more robust messaging protocol–one that could rival what they offered on iOS with iMessage — and one that didn’t involve your phone carrier charging you extra so they could play middle man with your text messages.

RCS, short for RICH COMMUNICATION SERVICES, is a game changer if you’re an Android user. To explain it simply, RCS is SMS/MMS 2.0, think iMessage Lite but for Android. RCS brings many features that Android users have not so secretly coveted about iMessage to the Android platform.

Features such as

Read Receipts
Writing Indicators
Group Messages
Reactions
Sending/Receiving Larger Files
Encryption

Read Receipts

Love them or hate them, they can be quite useful. Those on Android have struggled for years with not knowing for sure that their text messages were delivered. Now, with read receipts, you can see when your message was both delivered successfully and when it’s been read.

Great for parents whose kids like to act like they didn’t receive their messages!

Writing Indicators

Much like other messaging apps (Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Telegram) you can now see when someone is typing out a reply to your message.

Group Messages

If you’ve ever made or were forced into a group chat in a messaging app, then you know it is light years away from anything Android’s default text messaging app could offer. Simple things, like naming the group to more complex tasks, such as replying to a particular message directly, were impossible with SMS/MMS.

And if you are someone who can’t stand group chats, and wished to leave it without hurting anyone’s feelings–you were out of luck. With RCS you can do all of those things, including quietly leaving the chat without having to tell all the other participants that they need to make a new chat group… without you in it this time!

Reactions

Reactions are that fancy feature where if you hold down a message for a second, a menu with a few emojis pops up. Usually you can choose from the heart, laughing face, crying face, or thumbs up/down emojis to react to that particular message. It’s a feature that can bring a more natural conversational flow to your messages.

Send/Receive Larger Files

With RCS, you can send larger files to others who are also using RCS. Finally, you can send longer messages, clearer pictures and videos that don’t look like they were recorded on a flip phone!

Encryption

Finally, the most important feature–encryption. With privacy and security concerns always being at the forefront of our minds, encryption is a no brainer!

Sending and receiving SMS/MMS messages have always gone through your carrier. That means messages leave your phone, go to your mobile carrier, and then the carrier sends it along to the recipient (whoever you were sending the message to in the first place). This means that your text messages could be intercepted and read during any of those stops between you hitting send and your message getting to its final destination.

With RSC, your message is sent through your Wi-Fi, or data connection. It’s also encrypted (randomized) as soon as you hit send. It then stays encrypted until it’s delivered to the person you sent the message to. If an outside person tried to intercept your message, they wouldn’t be able to read it because of that randomization.

But, there’s one tiny problem

Before we get too excited, there is currently one glaring issue that needs to be addressed. That issue is none other than APPLE.

RCS is on the path to become the new standard for text messages going forward. SMS/MMS texts are too outdated, unreliable and frankly unsafe to keep being used as the primary way text messages are sent and received. Apple, however, refuses to incorporate the RCS protocol into their iMessage.

The reason for this? The leading guess on why Apple is refusing to move forward with the RCS protocol is that they are afraid it will be bad for their bottom line. One of the major draws to iOS — at least here in America — is iMessage. Apple’s iMessage has been superior in every way with its default messaging service.

All the features listed above for RCS have been standard in iMessage for years. Because of that, consumers flock to the iPhone for the richer messaging experience. It is such a phenomenon it’s been dubbed the “Blue Bubble vs Green Bubble Effect” With Apples Blue bubble you had all the above features, and talking to anyone with a green bubble (Android users) was choppy, disconnected and frankly a painful experience.

I should note this little blue bubble vs green bubble war has caused quite a bit of bullying towards the owners of the green bubbles.

Adding RCS would in theory eliminate some of those barriers and could potentially lead to some curious iPhone users to take a walk on the wild side and snatch up an Android phone at their next upgrade.

It also needs more than a brief mentioning, that Apple–a company that prides itself with being the “safer” and the more “privacy conscience” of the two major OS companies- seems to have no issues with leaving their users to default back to the wholly unsafe and unsecure landscape that is SMS/MMS messaging whenever they message a friend or family member not on iPhone.

So the problem remains that until Apple decides to play nicely with others, RCS will only be available to Android users. This new messaging will work between Android phones, as iMessage does with iPhone users. If you, and an Android user are talking to another Android user who has RCS enabled, you will have all the nifty new features right there at your fingertips–if you’re messaging an iPhone user… your message will be kicked back to the defaulted SMS/MMS protocol.

Read every story from Leigh Robbins (and thousands of other writers on Medium).Your membership fee directly supports Leigh Robbins and other writers you read. You’ll also get full access to every story on Medium.