RCS messaging reaches a new milestone

A few weeks after Apple announced that it would jump on the RCS, the “new” mobile messaging protocol championed by Google, the company is capping it off with the announcement of a milestone and new features. According to Google, over 1 billion monthly active users are using RCS in Google Messages. This is a huge turnaround in the adaptation of the technology for a few years now.

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Most of the new RCS features borrow a lot of inspiration from Apple’s iMessage in iOS 17. There’s a new feature that ties into your Google account to create a Contact Poster-like profile with your name and photo. Google is adding something called Photomoji, which lets you cut people out of your photos and use the photos to react to messages as you would with an emoji.

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Users will also be able to attach an emoji when they send a voice message, which Google calls a “mood.” Emoji shared in group chats or used as reactions will sometimes include an animation, too. And in a little nod to the whole green bubble / blue bubble situation, Google Messages will now let you change the color of the chat bubbles on each of your conversations.

Voice Moods add visual effects to audio messages.Image: Google

Apple’s commitment to supporting the RCS universal profile 2.0 means that image and video sharing across platforms will get much better, but it should be noted that the 2.0 spec doesn’t include end-to-end encryption.

The Android team and Apple team are actively working with the GSMA — to evolve the spec to include not only end-to-end encryption but also a lot of features that aren’t in the RCS spec that they’re working on adding back to the spec. Threaded replies, read receipts, and reactions are a few of those features that are unlikely to be supported for iPhone users as the standard exists today. Google’s new messaging features will soon be rolled out to RCS users on Android phones.