The long-awaited day is here: Apple has announced that its Messages app will support RCS in iOS 18. The move comes after years of taunting, cajoling, and finally, some regulatory scrutiny from the EU.
Right now, when people on iOS and Android message each other, the service falls back to SMS — photos and videos are sent at a lower quality, messages are shortened, and importantly, conversations are not end-to-end encrypted like they are in iMessage. Messages from Android phones show up as green bubbles in iMessage chats and chaos ensues.
Apple’s announcement was likely an effort to appease EU regulators.
Currently Google has bricked RCS for people with rooted phones in such a way that it fails silently for like the 4th time this year, and it’s looking like the modders may not be able to keep getting around it.