It's that time of year again, folks. As the tech world has sights set on the latest Apple event that is producing the new iPhone 16 as we speak, we all know we'll be seeing slightly improved phones, some impressive specs, and a few 'innovative" or "magic" new features from Apple. For me, however, the...
SMS can’t do group texting. It can’t do images, video, or anything other than a short message (140 to 180 characters depending on your language).
MMS followed SMS and it can do group texting. However, attachment sizes are laughably small, leading to 160p videos being compressed to hell to make it across the tiny video size limits.
MMS also used to cost more in some places. My carrier simply shut it down a couple of years ago because nobody was using it (I live in a WhatsApp country).
RCS is the official next generation of SMS/MMS, made by the people who define standards like 3G/4G/5G. Basically MMS 2.0. Very few carrière launched RCS services when they rolled out 4G, even fewer phones had RCS clients, so you ended up with needing to download your carrier’s (inferior) messaging app to maybe exchange RCS messages with other people if they also downloaded their carrier’s apps.
SMS still works and has always worked.
Isn’t RCS fully controlled by Google now, with encryption only if the messages first go through Google’s servers so they can scrape their sweet sweet advertising keywords?
It doesn’t really matter what server you use for encryption. The key exchange still happens through Google’s servers if you use Google’s app, but there’s nothing for them to scrape there. RCS is a federated network of carrier services so any server can carry your encrypted messages, though you’ll only be able to use a few servers in practice (your carrier’s server and Google’s, as Google opened theirs up to just about anyone). Also, messages are end-to-end encrypted by default so there’s nothing for Google to scrape.
The RCS spec is maintained by the GSMA, specifically this working group within it. That’s a collective of over 1200 companies. Google is probably part of GSMA, but so is everyone else who does anything with mobile networking.
Most Android phones use RCS, so it’s on-subject here since most of us don’t pay attention to iPhone news - and is welcomed news because of #2’s answer
You ever been in a low or no signal area, but have wifi, and try to text an iPhone user? Ever try to send/receive photos/videos with an iPhone and they look like garbage? Tired of getting SMS’s in group chats of “Mom loved ‘Please poop in the toilet next time, we are tired of cleaning it up’” instead of it just “hearting” the SMS message? A lot of new tech coming out today started from something that “was good” and was built on to make it better.
RCS uses data channels so it won’t work if other texting services don’t work either. It may work better in overloaded networks (RCS can use a separate APN for higher priority, I believe), but it’s not like SMS (which snuggles bytes in a space that would otherwise be an empty bag of bytes that is necessary for bare minimum messaging).
The thing about SMS is that it sometimes worked in low signal situations where voice and internet didn’t get through. That is a virtue that shouldn’t be given up easily. If anything its reliability should be enhanced. It’s fine to also support a fancier chat scheme as well, but a robust, 1-to-1 text-only mode is important.
At least with Google messages, you can still send normal SMS if your RCS chat can’t go through. I think there’s an option for it to automatically resend as SMS if RCS fails, too.
I guess there’s no way of knowing if SMS will eventually drop out of fashion, but it would be good to keep around so it probably will stay around as a back up
Edit: well, I didn’t see the other response say basically what I said, oops
Sounds good, thanks.
Right, I haven’t seen any of them say they are doing away with SMS. Even Android who has RCS in place also has SMS along side it, RCS is just an enhancement.
Even with RCS on both major platforms in the near future, a lot of automations and companies will continue to utilize SMS, and I’d bet that’s true for a long time.
Ah ok. I only use SMS in very basic ways, so if it’s going to stay around then I’m glad. Thanks.
I’ve had to turn off RCS because, when you don’t have WiFi/great cellular data access, you can’t do shit. I couldn’t even open the messages app.