RCS finally!!

[#1]

It's been taken out the hands of the useless idiots at EE. Free RCS for all on Android devices thanks to Google. (currently only UK and France, more counties soon). Before anyone shouts monopoly, networks had their chance they fluffed it up...

My pixel on Plusnet offered it today...

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2019/6/17/18681573/google-rcs-chat-androi...

[#2]

Working very well indeed here. SMS is now essentially dead, RCS adoption will surely skyrocket, networks will lose out on MMS income due to their incompetence, and apple will eventually have no option but to adopt or be even further behind.

[#3]

Behind? In what way is Apple behind?
RCS isn’t even encrypted.

[#4]

Apple only has SMS or proprietary iMessage for talking to.other iPhone users.

That pretty limiting before you even start on how far behind apples hardware and software and QA have slipped over the last 4 years.

Ever wondered why nobody talks about how important the camera on your phone is now apple cameras are mediocre?

[#5]

Too little, too late IMO.

The world's moved on somewhat in the last decade it's been in development, it offers nothing you can't already do with the likes of WhatsApp, FB Messenger, Telegram, Signal etc and that's without even considering "the network effect", i.e you use what your contacts use.

And this will be what, Google's 9th attempt at messaging?

[#6]

Sounds like you think this is a Google thing? It's nothing to do with Google.

None of those other apps you mention work without the other person needing to have the same app installed.

WhatsApp and Facebook are not trusted by most people due to their track record (Cambridge Analytica being the most famous, but not the only). WhatsApp only has transport encryption, but it's not going to stop Facebook knowing what you type and what you receive at each end.

RCS is universal, you don't need to know what the other person uses, it falls back to SMS/MMS if you are unfortunate enough to be locked into apple