AT&T joins T-Mobile in switching all Android telephones to Google’s Messages app for RCS

AT&T and Google have introduced that every one Android telephones on the community will use Google’s Android Messages app for SMS and RCS providers. T-Mobile made the very same partnership cope with Google in March, which leaves Verizon as the one US provider who hasn’t dedicated to switching its prospects to Android Messages by default.

Along with the swap to Messages comes one other essential shift: actual interoperability with RCS on different networks. AT&T has supported RCS for awhile now, however that assist has been as haphazard because it was half-hearted. The new deal additionally implies that AT&T prospects will profit from the rollout of end-to-end encryption for RCS that Google is rolling out to all prospects this 12 months (that rollout has already begun, in reality).

Google has been pushing RCS as its default texting answer for Android for a while now, touting it as an open normal that any provider can simply undertake as the following technology of SMS. RCS has a whole lot of benefits over RCS: there aren’t any character limits, it could ship bigger information, it could present typing indicators, provide higher group chats, Wi-Fi assist, and provide end-to-end encryption for one-on-one chats.

When Android Messages detects that you just’re texting with one other telephone that helps RCS, your textual content entry window will swap to say that you’re sending a “Chat” and that you’ve “Chat features” enabled. This isn’t the identical factor as Google Chat, the corporate’s different messaging service. Yes, it’s complicated — blame Google.

In any case, regardless of Google’s finest efforts, carriers had been sluggish to undertake RCS. In reality, in October 2019 they introduced a doomed try and kind an RCS consortium that went nowhere. Google ultimately needed to take issues into its personal arms, years into an overlong transition by providing RCS providers on to any Android person.

In all, the RCS Chat rollout has been an enormous mess due to politics, company fights, and plain previous complicated Google messaging app methods.

Now, with these provider offers, Google has gone one step additional to make it a real default. Unfortunately, it’s only a step. Verizon might want to get on board, too, as will one other massive firm: Apple. The iPhone doesn’t assist RCS and Apple has but to make a peep about whether or not it’s going to.