RCS texting is on its way to the iPhone, but Apple’s phones are not the only ones that still lack access to the more modern texting standard.
Google, which has invested considerably in building up RCS while touting promises of how it could bring typing indicators and higher-quality group chats, spent years pushing for Apple to adopt the messaging standard. It even built features into Google Messages like support for message reactions, in an attempt to make texting iPhone users a little less awful. Finally, by late 2023, Apple announced RCS support would be coming to iOS in 2024, bringing hope that improved texting between Android and iOS, complete with typing indicators and high-quality media, could actually happen.
If RCS is truly meant to replace the antiquated SMS and MMS texting that most phones have been stuck with for decades, it needs to arrive on all phones, not just Android phones or Apple’s iPhones.
That includes basic phones, like flip phones and other minimalistic feature phones one might turn to for a “digital detox.” That also means apps and services that rely on SMS to text a phone number, some of which Google itself makes, will need to adopt RCS.
There’s also a world of alternative Android texting apps that haven’t yet been given access to RCS texting.
It amounts to a lot of devices, services and apps that are still using SMS. RCS truly needs to be available across all mobile phones and texting apps, not just the iPhone, before we leave old standards like SMS and MMS behind for good.
The Nokia 2780 can use Google Maps, but for texting it’s stuck on SMS and MMS.
Basic flip phones could still use better texting
Basic phones are having their own kind of moment right now, resulting in retro flip phones and candy bar-style phones that have more features than ever. HMD, in particular, has spent the last few years continuing the Nokia phone line by creating basic phones that run on KaiOS, while also developing branded phones with…
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