I think the phrasing is important here.
Later next year, we will be adding support for RCS Universal Profile, the standard as currently published by the GSM Association.
If Google’s & Samsungs implementations aren’t compliant with the GSM associations’ standard then I don’t think this is going to work how people are expecting it to. The stuff Google has added to RCS messaging has all been their own implementation of it and not part of the standard, and as far as I’m aware android RCS gets routed through Google’s servers.
I wonder if RCS support is Apple trying to appease the EU with the DMA stuff forcing messaging apps to be interoperable with each other.
This is what I was hoping for. Something that an Android using friend of mine doesn’t grasp is that Apple adopting RCS with E2EE encryption as it’s implemented at the moment makes them beholden to Google. Google’s putting on a song and dance pretending to be the good guy in this situation but if that were true they would have developed E2EE in a way that was a part of the RCS standard instead of proprietary. In a weird turn of events; Apple committing to improving encryption for the RCS standard has turned this into a really good thing for everyone.
I never would have put this situation on my bingo card after years of Apple’s “Blue bubble vs green bubble” crap.
I don’t think google is doing anything particularly nonstandard, they basically wrote the standard. RCS requires a server for the device to talk through, and google has been the main server most devices use. Some mobile carriers hosted their own but found it wasn’t worth the effort since google would do it for them, and the encryption is such that carriers didn’t have much to monetize.
Even if google was doing something nonstandard, the amount of begging they’ve put in to get Apple to support RCS means I’m sure they will do everything on their part to ensure interoperability on their end.
RCS does not support end-to-end encryption, only Google’s proprietary extension does. Google has been simultaneously promoting RCS as a “standard” while prominently advertising a non-standard feature.
Does this mean the Nothing Phone’s feature is basically irrelevant now? If so that’s an option I hadn’t considered yet after watching the MKBHD video earlier this week.
Not necessarily, it depends what features from imessage you want, replies, editing texts etc aren’t AFAIK currently available on RCS, hell e2e encryption isn’t currently available with the Open Standard
What do you need encryption for? Are you a criminal paedophile?
Nice try Mr FBI
What can the Android people whine about next?