Ryan Haines / Android Authority
TL;DR
- A press note from Samsung re-highlighted how encryption is available only for Android-to-Android RCS chats.
- Google Messages on Android supports end-to-end encryption through a custom implementation on top of RCS Universal Profile, which lacks the feature.
- Thus, RCS chats between Android and iPhone users are not end-to-end encrypted, which is a big shortcoming for privacy and security.
It was a long wait, but iPhone users finally jumped onto the RCS bandwagon with the release of iOS 18 in September this year. RCS allows iPhone users to seamlessly text Android users with high-quality media, text reactions, richer group chats, and more. But it’s not all sunshine and rainbows for RCS, as there remains a big caveat when Android users send an RCS message to iPhone users, which is the lack of encryption.
Samsung shared a press note on how it worked with Google to accelerate RCS adoption. The press note reiterates much of what we already know, but the fine print at the bottom of it caught our attention more than anything else.
Now with the latest version of iOS supporting RCS, the benefits are available beyond the Android ecosystem when messaging across platforms.*
* All members of a chat must have RCS enabled. Requires Google Messages for Android users and iOS 18 or later for iPhone users. Encryption is only available for Android-to-Android communication.
As Samsung highlights again, encryption in RCS messages is only available when Android users chat with each other through Google Messages. If Android users chat with iPhone users through RCS, either through DMs or group chats, then the conversation is not encrypted. When iPhone users chat with each other, they skip RCS and adopt iMessage instead, which is also encrypted.
Google’s implementation of end-to-end encryption on Google Messages is on top of the RCS Universal Profile, as the Universal Profile does not include end-to-end encryption support. GSMA, the organization behind RCS, mentioned in September that it is working towards bringing interoperable end-to-end encryption to the Universal Profile to keep all RCS messages private and secure.
However, we seem to be still some time away from this future. Until then, it is best to remember that cross-platform chats between iOS and Android users remain unencrypted as they did in the SMS era. Given how important RCS has become in the past few months, we hope there will be good news to share on this front soon.