AT&T joins T-Mobile in switching all Android phones to Google’s Messages app for RCS
1Reported today on The Verge
For the full article visit: https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/30/22556686/att-android-phones-rcs-google-messages
Reported today in The Verge.
AT&T joins T-Mobile in switching all Android phones to Google's Messages app for RCS
AT&T and Google have announced that all Android phones on the network will use Google's Android Messages app for SMS and RCS services. T-Mobile made the exact same partnership deal with Google in March, which leaves Verizon as the only US carrier who hasn't committed to switching its customers to Android Messages by default.
Along with the switch to Messages comes another important shift: real interoperability with RCS on other networks. AT&T has supported RCS for awhile now, but that support has been as haphazard as it was half-hearted. The new deal also means that AT&T customers will benefit from the rollout of end-to-end encryption for RCS that Google is rolling out to all customers this year (that rollout has already begun, in fact).
Google has been pushing RCS as its default texting solution for Android for some time now, touting it as an open standard that any carrier can easily adopt as the next generation of SMS. RCS has a lot of advantages over SMS: there are no character limits, it can send larger files, it can show typing indicators, offer better group chats, Wi-Fi support, and offer end-to-end encryption for one-on-one chats.
When Android Messages detects that you're texting with another phone that supports RCS, your text entry window will switch to say that you are sending a "Chat" and that you have "Chat features" enabled. This is not the same thing as Google Chat, the company's other messaging service. Yes, it's confusing - blame Google.
In any case, despite Google's best efforts, carriers were slow to adopt RCS. In fact, in October 2019 they announced a doomed attempt to form an RCS consortium that went nowhere. Google eventually had to ta