iMessage and RCS, what’s going on?
Source: Macworld UK
You definitely know about iMessage and if you don’t, let me give a quick brief about it. iMessage is a messaging services created by Apple and launched with iOS 5 back in 2011. Soon it became an essential part of using any Apple product and communicating with anyone who uses any Apple device. The catch is, it only works with Apple devices and not at all with any Android devices. This created a bubble and ecosystem that consumers would stick with and not move to other platforms. So Google took it to their hands to build a good competitor to iMessage and to keep their consumers within their own ecosystem. That overall, has not resulted well for Google.
Source: Lifewire
Google started Google talk — good ol’ days when you logged in to Gmail and it was right there on the corner in the menu. It then expanded into Google Hangouts which was a sub product of Google+ and a standalone product in 2013. But that didn’t work out and later on Hangouts is going to be a enterprise product, so it then introduced Google Allo in 2016 and after close to 3 years it said goodbye to it. Finally they landed on RCS as the service that will change the way Android devices were being used to text.
RCS stands for Rich Communication Service and it is not created by Google. This is something people may mistake it for. RCS is a protocol that is supposed to replace SMS and was founded back in 2007 and eventually brought under the GSM (Global System for Mobile Communication) association. Due to carriers not taking it seriously, it wasn’t implemented well. Till Google in 2018 took it and wanted to implement it in their system and worked with major carriers across the globe. So the question is, how has it been so far?
It’s been a rough ride for Google in getting RCS started as it requires carriers to support it and that’s where the difference between iMessage and RCS begins. Also iMessage does not support RCS and it may change if most of the Android devices run RCS. Google has a list of carriers that will support RCS. But before that; let me tell you something and I hope it eventually happens, Google should do a built-in cloud messaging service on every Android devices sold to users. I will also tell you that it’s a better thing to do then adopting a standard that was left idle by carriers for a decade. It gives Google their own competitive edge in the market.
Making it a part of the Google Play services will make almost all OEMs to add it to their devices by default as another play app. Now I’m not some engineer to figure this one out but I think it’s possible. RCS is good and don’t get me wrong but when you have to work with major carriers it seems a lot to work with, considering the constraints of getting as many carriers on board. Apple’s implementation of iMessage is so much better and doesn’t require any carrier support except using carrier data that we all get. Hence carriers lose a lot of money due to iMessage and services like WhatsApp and Signal. There’s one more thing and that’s end-to-end encryption. It is something RCS lacks and that’s a huge bummer especially when companies like Facebook *cough* provide end-to-end encryption on WhatsApp and some parts of Messenger.
To sum up, RCS has a long way to go in terms of catching up with the most popular messaging apps and services. It still has some of the key features missing and limited functionality. That on it’s own makes it a worse contender to go up against iMessage. However if adoption rates of RCS is higher, there will be a crossover between other platforms and it will ultimately resolve the complications of SMS/MMS. Till then, you may continue to use iMessage and whatever app works for you best. I am definitely going to look out for how they are doing in future.
Originally published at https://zulfistechtalk.com on November 4, 2019.
