Apple’s Messages app has certainly come a long way. When the first iPhone launched in 2007, it could only send SMS — there weren’t even picture messages. Then it got MMS protocol support in iPhone OS 3.0 with the iPhone 3GS. With iPhone OS 5.0, Apple implemented its own iMessage chat protocol, making it easy for Apple users to communicate with other Apple device users.
However, when it came to messaging Android users, Apple dragged its feet for the longest time, sticking with SMS and MMS, which aren’t encrypted and don’t offer full-quality photo and video sending. It also sparked the whole blue bubble versus green bubble war.
In 2024, though, Apple finally brought peace by adding Rich Communication Services (RCS) to iOS 18. This is a feature I’ve been waiting years for, and it has made messaging much easier for me and my non-iPhone-using friends and family. Here’s why RCS has been a game-changer for me and my family.
Finally, no more pixelated images and videos
I’ve always been a heavy photo taker with my iPhone, but ever since becoming a parent a few years ago, my smartphone camera use has gone way up. Before my kid, I didn’t take many videos, but now there are so many more moments where a still image just won’t do.
I frequently chat with my sister, the only Android user in my immediate family, through messages. We often share photos and videos, especially of our pets. But whenever we did, the videos were sent through MMS, meaning they were the size of a postage stamp and incredibly pixelated and blurry, like from a potato phone in the early 2000s. It got to the point where we wouldn’t even send each other video clips; instead, we mostly just relied on uploading to something like Google Photos or iCloud and then sharing the link.
With iOS 18, Apple finally implemented RCS support in Messages, making it easier to communicate with Android users. RCS supports high-resolution photos and video, and this has been my favorite use case for RCS on my iPhone 16 Pro.
Again, I take a lot of photos and videos of my daughter and her shenanigans. For sharing batches of media, I typically upload them all to an app I’ve been using for the past three years called Family Album, where all my invited family members can view our photos and videos.
But sometimes, I want to make sure that my sister has seen something, whether that’s my daughter or our cat or dog — or even something cute I come across that she would like. I’ve really appreciated having RCS support now because I know the images and videos I send her no longer look like they were taken with a flip phone from the 2000s. Even in group chats, RCS support has made a difference because those images used to be pretty low quality, but now everything that gets sent looks great.
It’s the little things
Though the high-resolution images and video are the biggest reason why I love having RCS, it’s not the only one.
Another thing I like is the fact that you can not only see when an RCS message was delivered, similar to SMS, but you can also see if it has been read as well. Of course, this is dependent on the user enabling read receipts, but in the case of my sister, it’s been handy to see when she actually read my message instead of me just wondering if she saw it or not.
It’s also worth remembering that RCS on the iPhone is in its infancy right now. The full-resolution photos and videos are the main highlight and read receipts are the second-most important feature to me. It’s great that we have RCS finally on the iPhone, but there’s still room for improvement. Currently, RCS between Android and iPhone does not have end-to-end encryption (E2EE), which is a bummer.
When RCS is sent from Android to Android, there is some encryption on those messages to keep them safe from interference. The same E2EE applies to iMessage, which is Apple’s proprietary messaging protocol. It sounds like the organization behind RCS is working on implementing E2EE between Android and iPhone, though there is no estimated time frame yet.
I also wish that RCS messages were a different color than green, which is also used for regular SMS. It would be much easier to differentiate between SMS and RCS, similar to SMS/RCS and iMessage.
Despite the flaws, having RCS has been beneficial and worth the wait. Some people may just use iMessage exclusively because everyone they talk to may use an iPhone. But for me, when I have some family and friends who use Android and won’t switch, having RCS has definitely been a great quality of life improvement.