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Comment by devoply | Hacker News Reader

what happens if/when Google simply drops support for SMS? It could force this easily.

I don’t think you can drop support for SMS, at least not in the US receiving messages is required for FCC compliance for handsets currently iirc.

What are the consequences of this? What prevents Google from making and selling a six-inch ("phone-sized") tablet, and moving SMS to Hangouts and calls to Duo?

Probably the fact that nobody would buy it.

Is this device going to rely on public Wifi to get messages when out and about? Otherwise, if it needs a data connection, you'll have to get mobile networks involved, and I doubt they'd co-operate with an end run around themselves.

Tablets with a data connection are still required to support sms

what happens if/when Google simply drops support for SMS?

For one thing, Google devices stop being useful for numerous online services that now rely on SMS for automatic notifications and/or 2FA. I imagine the market for a phone that can't do SMS, at least here in the UK where such messages have become much more common over the past few years, is probably about two people, plus or minus two.

That's unlikely. It could be described by the network operators as a failure to conform to the standard. It's possible that regulatory features like Amber alerts/weather alerts use SMS.

They could totally move SMS into a hard to find sub-menu though, while the "Messages" app on the homescreen does RCS.

They could even make the default to reply to all SMS messages with RCS.

They'd more likely drop support for RCS.

Wouldn't exactly be the first time a messenger system is dropped.

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