Ryan Haines / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Samsung has reportedly announced that it will drop Samsung Messages as its default texting app in favor of Google Messages.
- The change affects the Galaxy Z Flip 6, Z Fold 6, and newer devices, but users can still download Samsung Messages.
- It looks like this change only affects devices in the US for now, though.
Many Android phones ship with Google Messages as the default messaging app, but Samsung has long insisted on using its own Messages app instead. That’s changing now as the company has reportedly announced it’s switching to a new preloaded messaging app.
The news was posted via the Samsung Members app and spotted by analyst Max Weinbach (h/t: 9to5Google), revealing that Google Messages will now be the default texting app on Galaxy phones.
“Starting with the Flip 6, Fold 6, and newer models, the Samsung Messages app will no longer be preloaded,” reads a screenshot of the post. “Instead, Google Messages will provide a new and enhanced experience to express your emotions, making communication safe and fun.”
The notice also reveals that users can still download Samsung Messages from the Galaxy Store, but adds that “some features will be excluded.” There’s no word on the affected features.
Android expert and Android Authority contributor Mishaal Rahman noted that Samsung Messages is still the default app in Canadian and European Z Fold 6 and Z Flip 6 builds. This suggests that the change only applies to US devices for now.
Ditching Samsung Messages: A premature move in the RCS era?
The news comes a few weeks after we discovered that Google Messages heavily compresses your images sent via RCS. Our own testing revealed that a 50MP, 6MB image is sent as a 3.1MP, 404KB shot via RCS with the Send photos faster toggle disabled. By contrast, Samsung Messages is able to send uncompressed images via RCS.
Fortunately, we recently discovered evidence that Google is working on the ability to send much larger images via RCS in Google Messages. So it looks like this glaring issue will be addressed in the near future. However, it may have been preferable for Samsung to wait for this issue to be addressed before dropping its own messaging app as the default option.
We’ve asked Samsung why it’s ditching Samsung Messages as a preloaded app in favor of Google’s client. We’ll update the article as soon as the Galaxy maker gets back to us.