For years, the iPhone’s two-tiered texting system has been a scorching subject. iPhone-to-iPhone texts within the Messages app are blue, and luxuriate in full encryption and extra sturdy media options, like animations. However messages to and from Android units are merely customary SMS texts, and marked with a inexperienced tint. Apple’s segregated messaging platform has been the topic of a , and even sparked chatter of regulatory intervention. However with Apple’s latest affirmation that it’s going to start supporting the newer RCS texting customary in iOS 18, is the iPhone messaging taking part in discipline about to be leveled? Or are we simply exchanging one acronym for one more?
Confused? Don’t fear. We’re about to put out what might change with Apple’s adoption of the GSMA’s next-generation messaging protocol.
What’s SMS?
Quick Message Service (SMS) is likely one of the most ubiquitous messaging protocols on the planet. It dates again to the early days of cellular know-how. In December 1992, Neil Papworth, on the time an engineer at Vodafone, sent the first SMS text message when he wished his boss “Merry Christmas.” By the beginning of 2011, roughly 80 p.c of all cell phone customers globally — an estimated 3.5 billion individuals — have been sending SMS messages each month.
At this time, nonetheless, the usual has some notable drawbacks. SMS messages are restricted to 160 characters, and texts you ship can’t embrace images, movies, audio or GIFs. For that, cell telephones have lengthy turned to a supporting protocol referred to as Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS), however it too has its share of technical limitations, together with woefully small message dimension limits. SMS additionally doesn’t help end-to-end encryption.
However for all of the methods SMS feels dated in an period dominated by immediate messaging platforms, it has one defining benefit: SMS messages are routed by means of your service’s cellular community, which means an information plan isn’t essential to make use of the know-how. That truth has meant SMS has typically served as a fallback for extra superior protocols, together with Apple’s iMessage.
What’s RCS?
RCS is brief for Wealthy Communication Providers, although typically additionally it is marketed as “Superior Messaging.” Both approach, it’s typically positioned as a next-generation substitute for SMS and MMS. RCS permits customers to benefit from many options that have been beforehand unique to over-the-top messaging platforms like WhatsApp.
For example, the RCS Common Profile consists of full help for learn receipts and typing indicators. It may additionally facilitate correct group chats, and permit customers to ship high-resolution photographs, video and audio clips. As of earlier this yr, Google’s implementation of RCS additionally affords by default end-to-end encryption (E2EE) for each one-on-one and group chats.
In contrast to SMS texts, RCS messages are routed over a cellular information connection or Wi-Fi hyperlink, with SMS functioning as a fallback. For that motive, the older protocol probably isn’t going wherever anytime quickly.
One factor that’s vital to recollect about RCS is that it isn’t and has by no means been envisioned as a substitute or competitor to immediate messaging apps. At its coronary heart, RCS is a communication protocol between cellular phone carriers and between a telephone and service. Benefiting from RCS doesn’t require signing up for a brand new service. So long as your telephone and service help RCS, and also you’re utilizing a appropriate app akin to Messages by Google, you’ll be able to benefit from every little thing the protocol has to supply — offered, in fact, the particular person or individuals you’re messaging meet those self same necessities.
How does iMessage match into all this?
Apple introduced iMessage in June 2011, a number of quick months earlier than Steve Jobs died later that very same yr. In contrast to RCS, iMessage is a proprietary messaging protocol managed completely by Apple and out there (barring some occasional, unofficial workarounds) solely on iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and Mac units. Beginning in 2024 with the iOS 18 update, Apple plans to combine help for RCS in its Messages app. As of writing this text, the 2 protocols don’t talk with each other. As such, Apple’s Messages app will default to SMS/MMS when customers try and ship texts and media recordsdata to somebody with an Android telephone.
From the attitude of an iMessage consumer, it may possibly really feel like Android customers are caught in a bygone messaging period — though the latter isn’t at fault for the state of affairs. Attributable to iMessage’s reliance on SMS/MMS for Android communication, media recordsdata find yourself pixelated, there aren’t any learn receipts or typing indicators and overlook about attempting to contain a number of iPhone and Android customers in a single group chat.
How did we get right here?
Though work on RCS started earlier than Apple introduced iMessage, the protocol had one main drawback that doomed it to a gradual rollout. RCS is a multi-stakeholder undertaking that features the involvement of the GSMA, a commerce physique that represents the pursuits of the cellular communications business at giant. In 2015, Google took a extra lively function within the proliferation of RCS when it acquired Jibe Mobile. With Jibe’s know-how as a base, it’s successfully Google that gives the glue that binds the RCS ecosystem collectively, however for a very long time, the corporate did a poor job of aligning everybody concerned in RCS towards a shared purpose.
In actual fact, the early days of RCS have been marked by false begins, with some carriers, together with a bunch made up of AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon forming a short-lived joint venture to push the protocol ahead earlier than finally aligning themselves with Google. Even Samsung did its personal factor for some time earlier than it too finally agreed to make Messages by Google the default messaging app it ships on telephones within the US.
For that motive, Apple has had little motive to undertake RCS. In spite of everything, why wouldn’t it give a bumbling competitor a freebie? And as not too long ago as 2022, it appeared there was little to no likelihood the state of affairs was going to vary anytime quickly. “I do not hear our customers asking that we put quite a lot of power into that,” Apple CEO Tim Cook dinner instructed the Code Convention that yr when he was requested about RCS messaging. “Buy your mom an iPhone” was his closing phrase on the matter.
Nevertheless it was additionally final yr that the European Union handed its landmark Digital Markets and Services Act (DMA). The laws requires “gatekeepers” to not favor their very own programs or restrict third events from interoperating inside them. Gatekeepers are any firm that meets particular monetary and utilization {qualifications}. Apple, in accordance with the regulation, is one such firm.
In the end, the EU dominated in 2024 that (although European regulators had loads of different directives for different facets of Apple’s empire). Regardless of being in compliance, nonetheless, Apple had . Per famous Apple pundit John Gruber, Apple’s greater motivation might have been to . However regardless of the motive, it seems to be a accomplished deal: Apple reaffirmed RCS help is coming to the iPhone as a part of iOS 18.
Does Apple’s help of RCS imply the top of inexperienced textual content bubbles on iPhone?
Alas, inexperienced bubbles are likely here to stay. The corporate famous in its unique touch upon RCS that iMessage “will proceed to be the perfect and most safe messaging expertise for Apple customers.” That stated, even in case you take that assertion to imply iMessage will proceed to show texts from non-Apple units in a different way from these despatched from an iPhone, iPad or Mac, Apple’s adoption of RCS ought to result in a greater consumer expertise for each iOS and Android customers.
Once more, Apple wants to supply specifics, however it’s straightforward to check a future the place its Messages app, due to RCS, correctly shows high-resolution photographs and movies despatched from Android telephones, and permits each iOS and Android customers to participate in group chats with out one thing breaking. Apple additionally stated in its unique November 2023 announcement it could work with GSMA members to enhance the prevailing Common Profile protocol, with a give attention to including end-to-end encryption to the usual.
In fact, whether or not that interoperability ends the stigma round inexperienced bubbles is more durable to reply.
Editors’ word: This story was initially printed in November 2023 and has been up to date to mirror new data.
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