The video then mentions the benefits of RCS on iPhone, namely the ability to send much higher quality media between Android and iOS. Google didn’t pass up a chance to have the iPhone admit it had other things to work on and ended the video with directly welcoming the iPhone to a “new era of texting”.
If only real-life online discussions could be this civil. | Video credit — Google
- Typing and read receipts
- Improved group chats
- Reacting to texts
- Sending GIFs
Aside from the aforementioned high quality media sharing, end-to-end encryption is also an important one. However, encrypted chats aren’t available on iOS just yet.
The introduction of RCS to iOS mainly benefits regions that don’t primarily use third party apps like WhatsApp for communication. For example, the U.S., where there’s a stigma against Android in schools and certain other places where younger people congregate. People even sometimes blamed low quality media on Android, not realizing that it was Apple that had been refusing to adopt RCS.
A lot of positive changes are happening between Android and iOS communication. However, the blue bubble and green bubble nonsense still remains to distinguish Android users in a chat.
Despite Apple’s best efforts, intervention from the EU has made a lot of the company’s prized traditions crumble. At least in the EU Apple’s walled garden isn’t very walled anymore. Welcome to RCS, iPhone.