RCS

After months of silence it seemed all but certain that CCMI, a project from all major US carriers to bring RCS to the masses was probably dead, but now a report seems to confirm as much. The Cross Carrier Messaging Initiative for RCS is — probably — dead.

RCS is the next big step in messaging, but carriers have delayed the transition time and time again, to the point where Google took its own step to roll out RCS to every Android phone in the world through its own app. Now, Google’s RCS rollout is expanding to a second app, Samsung Messages.

In mid-2019, Google decided to take over and speed up the launch of RCS. A little over 17 months later, Google announced today that it has completed a global rollout of RCS, while Messages will start testing end-to-end encryption.

The rollout of RCS has been slow, but as Sundar Pichai mentioned recently, it’s starting to gain momentum. This week, user reports reveal that Google is apparently rolling out RCS support to Google Messages users in India.

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Today, the folks at APKMirror got ahold of an internal “dogfood” build of Google Messages version 6.2. Here, “dogfood” is used in the sense of the phrase “eat your own dog food,” meaning actually use the product you’re building. Of course, our APK Insight team immediately dug in to see what all is coming with the next version of Google Messages. While we’re still actively looking through the many changes found within, one in particular stood out — end-to-end encryption for RCS messages.

Update 5/26: We now have a screenshot of one of the end-to-end encryption settings pages in action.

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Google’s initiative to bring RCS to every Android user has been a slow process, but it’s expanded quite a lot, even just in the past few months. Today, T-Mobile has announced a partnership with Google to bring RCS to every Android user on T-Mobile and Metro.

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Between the COVID-19 pandemic, ongoing projects, and recent reports, things are kind of a whirlwind for Google at the moment. In an interview released today, Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai discussed the future of the Google Pixel lineup, progress of RCS, and how COVID-19 has been affecting Google’s business. Here’s the summary.

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For the last few months, our APK Insight team has been tracking Google’s efforts to add emoji reactions to RCS and specifically their own Messages app. Some are now reporting that they’re able to add iMessage-like reactions to RCS messages.

RCS messaging has had a rocky rollout so far, but Samsung and Google are now teaming up directly to enable the rich text message service on more Galaxy phones.

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RCS chat is Google’s latest attempt to fix the Android messaging mess, and slowly the company has been rolling out the functionality to Android users around the world. Now, Google Messages is delivering RCS to users in Spain.

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Google has recently begun making progress toward bringing reactions to RCS, or at least their version of RCS in the Google Messages app. In the latest salvo in the petty war of blue bubble vs green bubble, Google Messages is getting ready to send some very iMessage-like reaction text messages, such as “Liked a photo.”

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RCS is widely rolled out in the US, Mexico, UK, and France after Google took charge of the rollout last year. There are now reports this afternoon that RCS is down, with many Android users stuck on the “Connecting…” status in Google Messages.

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Last October, a trick to enable RCS in the Messages app on any Android phone emerged. Google today announced that it will be killing “unsupported workarounds” by the end of February.

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Earlier this week, we spotted how Rich Communication Services became enabled stateside following a Carrier Services update. Google today announced that RCS is now fully available in Messages for Android stateside.

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Last month, Google unveiled plans to bring RCS to all Android phones in the United States, scheduled to roll out over the following weeks. Today, a new update to Carrier Services seems to immediately enable RCS on some Android devices, including Google Pixel phones.

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Last month, a method was discovered to force enable RCS/Chat messaging on almost any Android phone with the Google Messages app. As of this morning, this trick is no longer needed, as Google has officially launched RCS messaging in the US, bypassing carriers. Google has now explained how this RCS migration will affect those who used the unofficial trick.

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Earlier this year, Google took over the RCS rollout from carriers in the UK, France, and Mexico. With no market still so reliant on SMS as the US, Google today announced that it’s officially rolling out RCS in Messages stateside.

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