Make a public RCS API for Android. Stop trying to get people to use your app by withholding features from third party apps.
Yeah I thought RCS was going to be this platform-agnostic service à la SMS.
I’m trying out matrix with my close family and it’s working great. Bonus points it doesn’t require a phone number or even a phone at all.
Last time I tried to introducing my family to an alternate messaging that wasn’t the default app on their phone I started getting messages in both places with no rhyme or reason to why they would use one over the other.
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Don’t forget to take your hemorrhoid cream Bobby xoxo mom
Hmm… Like this? “Don’t worry Honey, I won’t tell anyone about the porn I found on your computer. Just be safe and know real women can’t do that.”
Yeah I thought RCS was going to be this platform-agnostic service à la SMS.
well in fact it is, but noone except I believe T-Mobile in the US and Samsung actually did it; everyone else just uses Google’s implemention because it’s a ready product and works great. well, except Apple, who doesn’t do it for their own bullshit reasons
Samsung on AT&T used the carrier implementation of it at least on the S22, which is broke AF. They announced they will be moving to Jibe from Google, but no time line is available AFAIK. Until then we are stuck with a broken RCS implementation.
The only properly working Matrox Android client is fat as fuck. I dread even opening it
Thanks you! I use Textra, it’s so much better than the stock app but Google never opened up their API. I believe for Google said they were going to back in like 2018 or something (if I’m not mistaken, which I could be)
Textra was the best before rcs was launched. Id love to see them get their hands on an API for it.
I tried switching to the Google app for a month or two. I ended up back at Textra. Turns out I care more about the user experience than rcs. Still, it would be nice to have rcs but I can live without it. But I agree, I’d love to see them get their hands on the API.
Fix the goddamned failover to SMS you morons! My kids don’t have data plans and I usually keep data turned off on my phone (because Canada), I keep having to turn off RCS altogether because if I try to send them a message over RCS it doesn’t failover to SMS (yes, I have the option turned on), it just sits there dumfounded saying “can’t deliver”.
You fail at failing.
Yes this is the biggest issue. It’s caught me out several times where I thought the message was sent but wasn’t.
I’ve reported it to Google. I hope someone reads the feedback…
You don’t get a promotion for blocking a buggy launch.
Isn’t that the point of QA? They are not getting promoted for blocking a release, but they should be denied promotions for signing off on a buggy release.
My company has a gap in public version numbers because QA filed a critical issue too late in the release cycle.
What? How do you not have enough data and how do your kids not have data? Plans are pretty cheap nowadays and they come with tons of data.
Koodo has $39 for 20 GB: https://www.koodomobile.com/en/rate-plans?INTCMP=KM_HDD_2023_Plans_AllPlans
Public Mobile (owned by Telus) has plans that even include US roaming: https://publicmobile.ca/en/on/plans
I haven’t heard of someone turning off their data or not having data in years.
I’m really cheap. My kids’ phone plans (unlimited talk and text) cost about $8/mo. Mine costs $15.
Ok, but you’re not really getting good value. Cheap doesn’t equal worth/value.
I don’t know your financial situation but an extra $24 would bring in a lot more value out of your phone than what the cost would be. What you’d get/value per $1 would drastically increase. And depending on your kids age, they will for sure be excluded from things just based on not receiving group messages, not being able to easily navigate places, etc.
I’m about to be a Dad and I couldn’t imagine my kids telling their friends they couldn’t do something or go somewhere because “My Dad wants to save like $24”
$40/mo means that after 2 years you’ve paid far more than the phone itself cost, even good mid-range devices like a Pixel. For that money I can get high-quality accessories like smartwatches and excellent bluetooth headsets that add far more value to my phone.
And I bought my kids their phones and their basic plans. They have allowances. if they want to spend their allowance on data, they can do so.
Adding accessories without having access to all the phone features is not worth it (internet everywhere is a feature of having an smartphone)
I usually keep data turned off on my phone (because Canada)
What does this mean? I’m in Canada and I’ve got data turned on virtually the entire time
As in “data plans are stupid-expensive here”.
Ah fair enough. Yeah moving here from a country where unlimited data was around $3 a month was a shock. That said I get 40 GB for $50 a month with Koodo so I’ve never even come close to reaching my limit.
I’m really cheap when it comes to anything monthly. I only got a data plan really recently and it’s bare minimum - before that I was paying $8/mo for just talk and text. I’m a luddite, I like owning stuff. I’d rather have an expensive phone and a cheap plan than the reverse, and at $40/mo a good deal but that’s still pricier than a good phone after 2 years.
That’s nice. But without some serious marketing they won’t get people off of WhatsApp in Europe.
I don’t know how much better going to another closed system is. AFAIK it’s only Google running these servers and only their implementation.
Yeah. I don’t really think it’s better either. I just think it’ll fall flat on its face like Google’s many many previous attempts at messaging unless they actually tell people it exists.
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Google’s RCS has 800M active users and it’s projected to hit 1B by the end of the year matching iMessage’s usage. Whether people actually know that it’s RCS or not, it’s been a pretty successful service for Google so far.
I use RCS with all of my Android user friends. It’s always been turned on by default for us.
Not sure what you mean not many Android users are using it?
“you won’t get shamed by iOS users anymore if Apple would just pick this up”
Meanwhile, Google Voice doesn’t even have it enabled!
T-Mobile and Samsung have their own implementations (which are compatible with Google’s)
I don’t think they care about beating WhatsApp, they only care about iMessage. WhatsApp doesn’t stop people from buying Android phones, iMessage does.
Don’t worry about Europe, we don’t use SMS and we also do not want RCS.
We are perfectly fine using apps like Telegram/whatsapp/Signal.The whole “green/blue bubbles” thing is USA only, keep it USA only please, thank you.
RCS done properly would be nice. I’d very much like to not be sending my messages through meta. Google’s implementation, however, just trades one American giant for another.
With an app it is just me, the app and whatever internet connection I have.
With SMS&co instead I have to deal with a system outside that, managed by the phone company and whatever.
Also apps are constantly updated, RCS standard will just become SMS2.Even iPhone users use an app in USA, it is only USA android users that for some random reasons are still stuck to SMS.
Here I just open telegram or whatsapp and message with anyone, no matter the phone. Or discord, or Matrix…True. But the for the last part, but the argument for RCS is the same. But more so. You’d know you could just message them using it and you wouldn’t need to know if they were using WhatsApp discord. No matter what their phone would have RCS, or would fall back to SMS.
Yeah, I already noticed this in the last few days… my texts now show two checkmarks and a lock… at least when I text another Android user.
You should also be able to swipe on the message to direct reply and send reactions too
But google voice?
As someone who currently uses Pulse SMS+ and has been looking for alternatives like Google Messaging, are there any major issues I should be aware of?
I liked Pulse since I could send messages from a desktop app, but I can’t install it on my work computer any longer.
I also liked the WearOS app from Pulse, but they discontinued it.
Google’s messaging app actually has a desktop browser based client that you can use to send messages from your computer. So that might actually be a good solution for you. I use it regularly and have no complaints about either the phone app or the web app.
I’ll have to try that out, thanks.
Don’t you have to stay connected to the internet on your phone to have that work or something?
Like WhatsApp used to work back in the day?
The one bug that I’ve had for a long while now is the “auto resend as SMS” feature that’s supposed to kick in if the RCS chat fails, takes forever to work. It’s much faster to just manually hit the send as SMS option if there are issues going on.
It uses the Signal protocol for its encryption so they went with a well known and proven option, but metadata isn’t encrypted like it is with the actual Signal app apparently so it’s not quite as secure.
A good chunk of my family uses Android and all have RCS enabled so I get to use it a good amount and it’s been pretty solid for me.
Edit: the desktop app is actually just a PWA website so that might be able to get around your work PC’s restrictions on installing apps.
You probably shouldn’t send private messages on your work PC though.
I moved to Google Messages when Signal dropped SMS support and it’s been fine. Most people I know who aren’t on Signal or WhatsApp are on iPhones, but there are a decent number who apparently have RCS so – perversely – Signal dropping SMS support had actually resulted in a net increase in my secure messaging.
That is why signal dropped support for it.theybssid it was to increase security because users could accidentally be using signal sending regular SMS. The way you got lore secure is not how they advertised the removal, but makes sense that happens in some cases. Same thing happened to me.
Makes sense. Thanks
I used Pulse for so many years, but it’s become a bloated husk of what it used to be. In terms of usability and features, I’ve found the Google Messages app to be a really nice improvement over it recently. Been using it for a few months now, and it’s been much better for me. The RCS stuff is a nice feature that I really hope continues to find its way to other apps, cross-platform, etc.
Only “benefit” of RCS I’ve seen is the avalanche of spam from companies. I’ll be turning it off. Don’t text that much anyway.
How do you get so much spam? Where are you from? I want to understand since usually I get no spam at all…
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Whatsapp is no different. They use burner phone numbers with unofficial bots.
Can confirm. With rcs on I get more messages from fucking insurance companies than my own people. Fuck Google and fuck their products.
i mean sms messages are extremely expensive and when you need to contact someone over sms rcs can be a life saver
In the US nobody pays for sms
I didn’t know you could even get a phone subscription without unlimited calls, sms, and mms anymore.
After a bit of looking I couldn’t find any subscription without it.
I actually have a dirt cheap $15/mo Public Mobile Canada plan that has 250MB data and 100 minutes… and even that has unlimited SMS.
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It’s literally the cheapest plan I can find anywhere that includes any data. I can get $8/mo for unlimited talk and text but zero data.
well I’m in ukraine, don’t know anything about us.
yeah, all plans have unlimited calls (within the same carrier) but not sms (which usually cost around 2 cents/message) here
sms is basically dead anyway… (it’s basically just a confirmation code delivery system)That’s so strange! Here in the US lots of people still use sms, and it’s free/included unlimited in all the plans. I have heard previously other countries like in Asia and stuff, don’t really use sms either though, so that’s interesting to me…
SMS has been free in the UK for a long time but nobody uses it, I think WhatsApp killed it around 2010ish. I think the main drivers for people switching to WhatsApp from SMS were:
- Works with WiFi when you have no network signal. A lot of times, especially back then, phone signal would be almost non existent inside larger buildings, especially older buildings where the walls are like 1metre thick.
- Way way faster and more responsive, you can see when it’s sent, received and read
- Can send pictures and messages! You could do it via MMS but that was (and is today) expensive (it’s like £0.50 per message according to my contract). Plus MMS was slow, sometimes messages wouldn’t send, or they’d get sent to an email inbox provided by the phone network, and/or they’d arrive days later.
- Group chats
It’s also interesting that the top comment here mentions wanting SMS fallback. For me it would bug the hell out of me if it did fallback, I’d rather the message just not send.
Not in many other non-US countries
I am not for the USA but maybe it’s different in other European countries and elsewhere.
I thought it was already on by default? Or is that just for pixels
it’s not. atm it’s not only opt-in but also requires to actually go to settings and enable it, it won’t prompt you when launching the app
Hmm on my Pixel it prompts me every now and then with a popup, even though I don’t want to enable it.
I never use text messages, I already use Telegram and WhatsApp, and I don’t like that, in the rare case I need to send an SMS, I’m not sure if it uses my internet connection or not.
weird. I had to manually enable it for several members of my family because “they couldn’t join group chats” and “received poor quality photos”. none of them had a pixel though, so perhaps it’s a pixel thing to force you
For me at least it would always pop up and ask me if I wanted to turn it on during the initial setup of the app. I guess now it’ll skip that step and just immediately turn it on.
The people using RCS, does the phone have to be on for it to work? If you’re using the web app can it just skip the phone entirely?
It does require, and go through, the phone
Yes, the phone need to be on. If the phone you are sending an sms to is not on, the application fallback to standard SMS.
the application fallback to standard SMS.
it doesn’t by default
Which is good from a security perspective, but also pretty annoying from a QOL perspective.
therefore it can be enabled in settings
It’s buggy and often fails to fallback even with the option turned on. And the default behavior should be “prompt to resend as SMS and offer to enable the option” not “sit on your hands and look moronic when you can’t send RCS”. This is embarrassingly bad software.
fair
Phone needs to be on since messages are stored on the device
All messages are relayed through your phone. So yes, it needs to be active
I finally gave up on rcs and I’m on beeper now. I had one or two friends that it just never works with and there is no way to disable it per conversation so I was unable to talk to just those people. Hopefully when beeper adds rcs soon it’ll be better.
Beeper seems to be open source!
Edit: sadly the app isn’t
How are you liking Beeper? I’m on the wait list.
I can’t overstate how big of a fan I am! There are certainly a few rough edges (particularly with attachments and gifs for text convos) but other than that it’s been great. I use the iMessage integration but only with one friend cause I’ve been nervous to rely on it. The devs are really good at communicating when there is an outage which gives me a lot of confidence.
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I see it’s currently invite only - just signed up for the waitlist because wow that looks awesome.
MLS please come and save us…
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I’ve seen this message before with a missing or outdated Carrier Services.
That’s actually strange. Google said a while back that all devices with Google Messages installed should be able to use it regardless of carrier too.
Outdated software? Install a custom ROM
