What Is RCS Messaging and Why Is Google Pushing Apple To Use It? – Popular Mechanics

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To say we all text or at least know about texting is an understatement. Most of us use apps such as Apples iMessage for iPhone users or WhatsApp to send our messages. However, that doesnt mean the 1992-born classic SMS (short message service) is dead, even if Google wants it to be.

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Cue up the RCS vs. SMS debate and Googles shaming of Apple, trying to persuade the digital giant to drop SMS altogether and join Android users in the RCS world. So whats the difference, you may ask. While we may all just see green and blue bubbles, theres more behind the scenes.

That 160-character limit, thats SMS. Debuting in 1992, SMS enabled mobile devices to do more than just talk. It introduced an entirely new world of communication with the text message. The limits of SMS are byproducts of its age, even with the early 2000s introduction of MMS (multimedia messaging service) that introduced the ability to send small files of multimedia (think low-resolution photos or video snippets). After all this time, you can point to many age-induced drawbacks of SMS: a limit on media types supported; no messaging with Wi-Fi since it relies on a cellular connection; and a frustrating mess of additional problems, such as difficulties with group chats, a lack of read receipts, and none of those fancy bouncing dots letting us know somebodys cooking up a new message.

Add the fact that SMS texts arent secure, and the billions of SMS messages sent every day in the U.S. alone causes concern about privacy more than features.

Because of the lack of encryption, hackers can search for weak points anywhere along the virtual path between the sender and receiver, which includes a ton of different network devices and computing systems at many different providersonly one of which needs to be exploited via technical vulnerability, misconfiguration, social engineering or insider attack, says Christopher Howell, CTO of Wickr.

Still, many of us send most of our messages in over the top applications such as WhatsApp, iMessage, WeChat and others, that use internet protocols rather than the cellular networks used by SMS to transmit messages. This adds a stiffer layer of encryption and security, but it also ups the ability to bring in feature-rich add-ons that make the messaging more modern, even if it requires the person youre messaging to be using the same service as you.

Call it a rich communication system. Or, RCS, for short. The GSM Association, a trade group representing mobile networks, spent more than a decade fine-tuning RCS before it made its official debut in 2016. Its an attempt to provide an app-like service for what was the SMS market. And Google has embraced it, saying that Android phones now running RCS can easily text as if they were in these feature-welcoming apps, sending high-resolution photos and videos, emoji reactions, end-to-end encryption (for individual, not group, conversations), read receipts, and more.

Google believes RCS solves the problems associated with SMS.

With its reliance on iMessage, Apple still offers SMS for texting features when you message outside of this app (i.e. when Apple users must resort to a green-bubble conversation with an Android user).

Google wants that to change, saying that Apple refusing to adopt the modern RCS standards is holding back the world of texting. In fact, Google has created an entire public relations campaignGet The Messagesurrounding that effort.

Everyone should be able to pick up their phone and have a secure, modern messaging experience, writes Elmar Weber, a Google engineer, as part of the campaign. Anyone who has a phone number should get that, and thats been lost a little bit because were still finding ourselves using outdated messaging systems.

Of course, Googles big push to persuade everyone else to adopt RCS is self-serving, since it has adopted RCS for its own Messages app. Apple has been either silent or non-committal on dropping SMS for RCS. Detractors of RCS say it may fix some issues, but doesnt solve them all. In fact, RCS comes with its own drawbacks, they say, such as the fact that end-to-end encryption only works in one-on-one conversations, and that RCS has a propensity for opening the doors to spam messages.

Add in Apples blue-bubble domination, and the company has no real incentive to play nicely outside of its own sphereand certainly not if it creates a more seamless transition away from an iPhone and into an Android device.

Of course, Apple isnt the only non-RCS giant out there. WhatsApp, basically the global leader in messaging apps outside of the United States, is non-RCS compliant. Google isnt going after them.

Benedict Evans, an independent technology analyst, wrote on Twitter that when a company that lost (and Google has lost messaging, but mostly to FB [Facebooks parent company Meta owns WhatsApp], not Apple) asks a company that won to adopt a standard that it doesnt look like anyone uses, one should probably be a little cynical.

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What Is RCS Messaging and Why Is Google Pushing Apple To Use It? - Popular Mechanics