Apple iMessage is about to change out of all recognition, if a new report is correct. At next week’s Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple is expected to announce the availability of RCS messaging for the iPhone, likely coming for this fall’s iPhone 16 series, and iPhones that will run iOS 18. That will go on general release in the fall, but will be in public beta in a matter of weeks. We’ve known for some time that RCS support was coming, but the timing is big news, as Apple has previously only committed to late 2024.
Apple iMessage is about to be transformed.
Rich Communication Services messaging is an advanced form of texting that is currently used on Android phones and means that messages sent between iPhones and Android handsets will gain extra features which were previously unable to bridge from one platform to the other.
RCS is much more sophisticated and capable than SMS, which is limited to 160 characters, is not great with media and has no encryption, for instance.
If you’re sending a message from one iPhone to another, this is of little interest because Apple’s iMessage has so many superior features—such as the typing indicator which lets you know your message is being read by the other party, or funky extras like balloons or confetti filling the screen.
The problem is, these features don’t play nicely with Android phones, and it’s one of the reasons that many people, especially outside the United States, have migrated to the platform-agnostic WhatsApp.
It’s also the reason that when an iPhone user receives a message from an Android phone, the message shows up in green livery rather than blue. Though it doesn’t excuse the way people look down on green bubbles. I mean, there are more important things in life, you know.
But the move to adopt RCS has been greeted by many, including Inderpal Singh Mumick, CEO of RCS business messaging hub Dotgo, who has described it as “a huge win for Apple customers and a game-changer for the messaging ecosystem.”
So, what will it mean? As soon as it arrives, features found on each platform separately will be available across both. So, Android users will be able to share their location with iPhone users within text message threads, there will be typing indicators common to all users and receipts to show your messages have been read. There’ll be higher-quality media sharing and greater encryption.
But, as Forbes contributor Zak Doffman notes, “RCS is not end-to-end encrypted. RCS is more secure than SMS, but nowhere near as secure as iMessage, Google Messages, Signal, WhatsApp or even Facebook Messenger. This can be fixed by an update to the core RCS platform itself, which is what Apple indicated they would push for when they announced RCS last year.”
But even if it is not as secure, iMessage with RCS support has so many other advantages, I suspect many iPhone users will desert WhatsApp and other services for the one that is core to Apple’s devices.
Oh, and one more thing about green bubbles: Apple has said that even when it has adopted RCS, “Blue bubbles will still be used to represent iMessages, while green bubbles will represent RCS messages,” as 9to5Mac reported.