Google just enabled RCS by default for all Messages users | Hacker News Reader

Google just enabled RCS by default for all Messages users

androidpolice.com

17 pointscpncrunch17 comments

So it turns out that I probably disabled RCS first thing when I obtained this phone, so I had to manually set it up.

Just poking around, I notice that it's feebly attempting to sort messages into "Personal" and "Business" tabs, but this is fraught with errors which can't be corrected.

It's time to poll all my friends to ask what smartphone OS they use, and put that info into my contacts. Will this change highlight the OS type/RCS capability automatically?

I just noticed RCS was turned on automatically for me today, and I've now disabled it. Previously I had deliberately not enabled it.

It doesn't seem to have made any changes to my messages.

Why do you want to be unencrypted SMS with potato MMS for pictures? Leave it on, it'll auto-detect what the other side is using.

Because not everyone has perfect internet all the time and I've found it horribly unreliable on a flaky data network, sometimes taking hours to send a message via standard sms after retrying RCS over and over.

How is it with all the other data-only messengers you use? Is SMS the only reliable messaging service you have?

Majority are just as bad but they at least tell you when there's a failure, so sms makes a good fallback

You don't have to poll them. If the prompt is blue, they're on Android and RCS is on.

If it's green, they're on iOS or RCS has been disabled by choice.

You don't have to edit or sort anything. Leave it on automatic detection. It'll either be blue or green for SMS.

Thank you, that's informative, and I will pay attention to that. However, I know it's optional, but I do enjoy categorizing things, and I love using Google Contacts to do this.

Whenever I receive in SMS a TOTP code or some sort of SMS notification, I add the sender's number to my Contacts. The "type" field or "label" of the phone number I set to "SMS notifications" instead of "Work" "Main" "Home" whatever.

I decided I could categorize my friends' phones in the same way; rather than uninformative labeling of all their numbers as "Mobile", I could classify them as "Android" or "iPhone" and therefore, I don't need to open Messages to see which is which, I can identify them anywhere I have Contacts. (I don't run Messages on my Windows 10 Pro machine, for example, but I do use Contacts.)

Why not run messages on your Windows machine? It's a webpage. You can SMS and RCS right from your browser.

The message sorting is not RCS. It is another Google Messages feature which can be disabled in Settings->Message organization. It has been available for quite awhile but not the default. Possibly they decided to make both features the default at the same time. As a side note, it actually does a pretty good job of categorizing my messages.

cries in Google voice

sshhh if they remember it they might kill it

Google Allo

What are the pros and cons of RCS?

No encryption for group chats, but that has been changed and is encrypted.

Less features than the other messaging services, like Whatsapp, Messenger and more.

RCS is basically a modern evolution of SMS. It's an open standard, but by far the biggest implementation is from Google on the client and server end. The mobile carriers really never got their shit together.

The downside is that there is no public RCS API on Android like there is for SMS, and Apple doesn't support it.

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