Google’s Messages app is getting updates like in-line replies to single messages and starring texts.
Some of the new features are RCS enabled, which is not fully compatible with Apple’s iMessage.
RCS works over internet, so it can support more features like multimedia and interactive features.
Google is giving Apple a taste of its own medicine.
The company’s latest updates to its Messages app takes its battle with Apple even further, and is going to make texting between iPhone and Androids even more annoying than it already is.
The updates are great if you’re an Android user. Google Messages’ new features include the ability to reply to individual messages, star them, and set reminders on texts. But these features and some other updates to Messages are RCS-enabled, meaning they’re not going to be very compatible with SMS, which is the texting standard that iMessage switches to when messaging someone without an iPhone. iPhones exchange messages using iMessage, Apple’s proprietary messaging system, but revert to SMS when texting an Android.
One feature that’s part of Google’s payback to Apple is that now, when Messages users react to an SMS text with an emoji, iPhone users will get a text saying the other person reacted to their text with a description of whatever emoji the person used. It’s similar to when iMessage users react to an SMS text, with the recipient getting a “so and so loved” message instead of seeing the heart emoji reaction.
RCS stands for Rich Communications Services, and was chosen in 2008 to potentially replace the SMS texting standard that is from the 1990s. Compared to SMS, RCS can support more multimedia features on messages and make it easier to send things like GIFs and hi-resolution videos, and also make group messaging better. The reason why is because RCS operates over the internet, not on a carrier’s bandwidth. Text messages sent with RCS would work like iMessages between iPhone users, according to The Verge.
For example, like in iMessage, Google Messages users will be able to watch YouTube videos in the app, and can make a calendar event if a date or time is sent in a message.
Google wants to push more carriers and developers towards RCS and away from SMS. Carriers like AT&T and Verizon, and manufacturers like Samsung and LG, have all promised RCS.
“From a Google perspective, we think every Android user should just have messaging over Wi-Fi,” Sanaz Ahari, who manages Android and business communications at Google, told The Verge. She added that the Android and Apple ecosystems have “a lot of conversations.”
Google nor Apple immediately responded to Insider’s request for comment.
In August, Android launched a page on its website calling Apple out for refusing “to adopt modern texting standards when people with iPhones and Android phones text each other.” The page has buttons that take users to Twitter to tweet at Apple to “stop breaking my texting experience. #GetTheMessage” with a link to Android’s page urging Apple to “fix texting.”
“We would much prefer that everybody adopts RCS which has the capability to support proper reactions,” Jan Jedrzejowicz, Google Messages product manager, said in a briefing before the Messages updates were announced. “But in the event that’s not possible or hasn’t happened yet, this feels like the next best thing.”
Recently, Apple CEO Tim Cook said he doesn’t get a lot of feedback from iPhone users that Apple needs to fix messaging between iPhones and Androids. Apple doesn’t have much incentive to do so, either. In legal documents from a 2021 lawsuit between Epic Games and Apple, an Apple executive said “Moving iMessage to Android will hurt us more than help us.”
Read the original article on Business Insider
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