During Google I/O today, Google took a shot at rival Apple. As noted by Insider, Googler Sameer Samat was able to generate applause, laughs, and cheers from the audience when he said, “When you’re texting in a group chat, you shouldn’t have to worry about whether everyone is using the same type of phone.” Samat went on to add, “Sending high-quality images and video, getting typing notifications, and end-to-end encryption should all just work.”
He concluded by saying, “We hope every mobile operating system gets the message and adopts RCS so we can all hang out in the group chat together — no matter what device we’re using.” Samat, on Google’s behalf, was keeping the pressure on Apple to support RCS, or Rich Communication Services, which is a messaging service that Google created for Android that allows Android users to have the same features as iOS users on Apple’s iMessage messaging service.
Both iMessage and RCS both work over mobile data and Wi-Fi connections and deliver higher-quality images, end-to-end encryption, read receipts, typing indicators, and more. Just as everyone in a chat must be using iOS for iMessage to be working, everyone in an RCS chat must be using the RCS platform for all of the features to work. The problem is that iPhone owners start attacking and insulting Android users when they become part of a group chat since that disables all of their lovely iMessage features.
Interestingly, whenever an iPhone user joins an all-Android user RCS chat, the same thing happens to Android users. They lose the high-quality images and video, the read receipts, the typing indicators, and the blue text bubbles (which turns green). So in other words, both iOS and Android users lose out when someone using a different platform joins a chat. But it doesn’t have to be like this.
If Apple were to support RCS, iOS and Android users would be able to see each other’s images and videos in high-quality, it would also show Android users the actual emoji reaction from iPhone users instead of spelling it out. Samat says that 800 million people currently use RCS and that number should hit 1 billion by the end of this year.
