RCS Is a Walled Garden, Just Like iMessage
The Rich-Communication Standard, known as RCS, was originally promised to replace SMS, providing all the benefits of modern chat platforms without being locked in. But so far its walls are almost as steep as any other walled garden.
RCS promises secure and interoperable SMS
SMS is integrated into all cell phones and networks. This is the technical name for the act of texting, and it comes with many limitations. Messages can’t exceed 140 characters (which explains Twitter’s original character limit) without being converted to MMS, which not everyone can receive. Photos and videos suffer a drop in quality. There are no typing indicators or emoji reactions. And worst of all: everything we do is sent and stored in the clear, where any operator, law enforcement, government, or hacker can read what we said.
RCS aims to right each of these wrongs. Your messages can be as long as you want. Photos and videos appear in full quality. You know when your friends have seen your message and if they respond. You can reply to a message with an emoji and all these communications are encrypted. And like texting, you’re not limited to any app or platform. You can use the RCS client of your choice.
That’s the promise. This is not yet reality.
Instead, everyone must use one of two apps
If you use Android, in most parts of the United States and on most devices, you only have one choice: Google Messages. This is also largely true in most other parts of the world. And if you use Google Messages, you get all the promised features, but almost exclusively with contacts who also use Google Messages.
That’s gradually changed over the past year, now that Apple has built RCS into iPhones starting with iOS 18. The promised features listed above are almost all here, although they didn’t arrive all at once, and some haven’t arrived yet. End-to-end encryption, in particular, is an important feature that Apple says will be available soon, now that the GSM Association has added encryption to the RCS Universal Profile. It turns out that Google adds encryption using a custom extension, muddying the waters around what is RCS and what isn’t.
So if you use Google Messages or the Apple Messages app, you’re now mostly living in the promised RCS future.
But what if, like me, you don’t want to use Google Messages or aren’t a big fan of Google apps in general. Alternatives are practically non-existent.
Alternatives cannot keep up (and largely do not exist)
Since I’ve been carrying around a Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 for the past year, I have another option: Samsung Messages. Samsung’s SMS app added RCS integration years ago, if your carrier supports it. Then this feature was removed, at least here in the US. Samsung even stopped offering the app on its new phones and now recommends using Google Messages. When I tried to use the app as someone who switched to a Galaxy phone around the time Samsung Messages was declared dead, I never got to see the feature in action. At least, not at first.
When I recently returned to Mint Mobile and decided to try Samsung Messages on a whim, I was surprised to see RCS support hidden in the app settings under the name “chat features.”
I now have read receipts and typing indicators, but the emoji reactions are nowhere to be found. It turns out that since pushing people towards Google Messages, Samsung has quietly re-enabled RCS and released another update. Since Samsung Messages has features that Google Messages lacks and integrates better with my other apps, I’ll stick with it for now, but I wish its future was more secure.
As for those of us who don’t use a Samsung phone? Sorry. In Japan you can try +Message, and there are a few options in China, but for most of the world it’s Google Messages or Apple Messages. No other chat app has implemented RCS, and even if they did, it might not be enough.
Top apps also lock you out with non-RCS features
Apple Messages isn’t just an RCS client. This is a chat app that also offers RCS as an option. Apple would still prefer that you share all your messages with other iPhone users through its own iMessage chat protocol (and buy your mother an iPhone so she doesn’t miss anything). To that end, it continues to make improvements to iMessage that are separate from RCS and go beyond just keeping chat bubbles different colors, like the new iMessage features added in iOS 26.
Lest you lament that Apple is particularly keen to lock people down, Google has also added specific features to Google Messages. After all, most people have never heard of RCS. All they know is that they can do certain things on their iPhone that they also wish they could do on their Android phone (or vice versa) without needing to search for another app. Apple and Google are in a race to see who can come up with a feature that attracts people while staying on top of the features their rival adds.
The bottom line is that if another chat app ever appears with RCS support, it could prove to be too little, too late. RCS isn’t old like SMS, but it can still seem a bit basic.
So far, RCS has not ushered in a wave of interoperable applications like we have for SMS. So far, the biggest achievement has been getting iMessage and Google Messages to play. To be clear, this is not nothing. But in the past, I’ve preferred to use Android’s generic messaging app, a third-party alternative, or my OEM’s themed version rather than the chat app Google focuses on. Today, aside from a somewhat functional version of Samsung Messages, Google’s chat app is the only option. It may provide a great experience, but it’s still a huge step backwards.
