The unthinkable has occurred: Apple introduced the arrival of RCS to the iPhone

In a surprising turnaround, Apple confirmed in an announcement that it’ll convey the RCS service to iPhones, which can vastly enhance the expertise of sending messages between iPhones and most Android telephones. The announcement comes as Apple is below unprecedented regulatory and authorized strain to raised work together with non-Apple services and products and growing public outcry from customers to do the identical.

The assertion despatched to a number of media retailers said the next:

Later subsequent yr, we are going to add assist for the International RCS Profile, the usual presently revealed by the GSM Affiliation. We consider that RCS Common Profile will present a greater interoperability expertise in comparison with SMS or MMS. It will work alongside iMessage, which can proceed to be one of the best and most safe messaging expertise for Apple customers.

RCS is a brand new messaging customary that has been closely promoted by Google and adopted by the GSM Affiliation, the wi-fi trade’s governing requirements physique. It’s meant to switch SMS and MMS because the default carrier-based messaging answer, bringing it as much as fashionable requirements in an interoperable, device- and platform-agnostic approach. Though RCS is just not unique to Android, it’s supported within the messaging shoppers of most Android telephones, and Apple’s reluctance to assist the usual has made it a de facto “Android-only” expertise.

Apple informed TechRadar that it’ll not assist “proprietary extensions” that search so as to add encryption on prime of RCS and as an alternative hopes to work with the GSM Affiliation so as to add encryption to the usual. On Android telephones, some apps (comparable to Google Messages) assist encryption whereas others don’t.

We do not know precisely how RCS will work on the iPhone, however the most certainly state of affairs is that RCS shoppers will nonetheless be messaging like SMS shoppers, also called inexperienced bubbles, whereas iMessage customers will nonetheless ship with blue bubbles. Apple will nonetheless need to differentiate between messages despatched utilizing Apple units and people despatched utilizing Android telephones since many options is not going to be supported via RCS. However they will be capable to get alongside and one inexperienced bubble will not blow up all the group chat.

We don’t know when “later subsequent yr,” however that phrase makes it sound like that is an iOS 18 characteristic scheduled for a fall launch. We’ll seemingly study extra at WWDC in June, however briefly, RCS assist signifies that whenever you use Messages to speak with somebody who has an Android telephone (or there’s an Android person within the group textual content), you may get options like:

• Ship messages through Wi-Fi or mobile phone.
• Group chats of as much as 100 individuals.
• Full-size recordsdata, photographs, and movies (perhaps as much as 100MB).
• Supply and browse receipts.
• Writing indicators.
• Improved safety, together with encryption.

The RCS Common Profile has gone via a lot of updates prior to now few years so as to add options and capabilities, and we do not but know which model Apple intends to assist, or what elective options it would undertake. You possibly can most likely anticipate all the things within the checklist above, however maybe not a few of the extra superior or fashionable RCS options.

The transfer is a sea change for Apple, which has proven no inclination to undertake RCS. The truth is, at a convention final September, Tim Prepare dinner informed an attendee that one of the best answer to blurry photographs despatched from iPhones to Android telephones was to “purchase your mother an iPhone.”

As for iMessage, it would nonetheless supply extra options, together with the power to edit and unsend messages and superior privateness and safety. In different phrases, there’ll nonetheless be iMessage, however the expertise for iPhone customers sending messages to these utilizing Android telephones will enhance dramatically — they will even nonetheless want to have a look at the inexperienced bubbles.