The iPhone is finally going to support RCS in 2024. However, Google should fix a huge problem with Google Messages before that happens.
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Published on21 minutes ago
At some point this year, the unthinkable will finally happen: iPhones will support rich communication services (RCS). This will knock a few bricks out of the infamous “walled garden” that prevents iPhone users who rely exclusively on iMessage from effectively communicating with Android users. While people outside the United States have already solved this interoperability problem through the use of platform-agnostic apps (WhatsApp, Telegram, etc.), some iPhone users in the US are so addicted to iMessage that they will ostracize friends and family or even refuse to date someone who initiates the “green bubble” in their conversations.
Sadly, the green bubble isn’t going anywhere. RCS support, however, will allow several notable new features to work between the native messaging apps of Android phones and iPhones. These include read receipts, typing indicators, location sharing, and the ability to send high-resolution media.
That last one is the most notable. Remember back in 2022 when Apple CEO Tim Cook made the completely embarrassing “buy your mom an iPhone” quip to an iPhone user who was asking why they can’t share videos with their mom, an Android user? Well, RCS support will finally solve that issue, and that person won’t need to buy their mom an iPhone. When that all went down, I wrote an opinion piece about how Cook’s statement was beyond awful from an environmental point of view but also from the point of view of its own users, one of whom was physically right there in front of him telling him how much they want to communicate with their mother effectively!
With all this in mind — and as a diehard Android user who has personally experienced “green bubble hate” — you can imagine how excited I was to try out RCS on an iPhone for myself. It’s currently only available in iOS 18 beta in the US, so it’s not widely rolled out, but I got it set up on my iPhone 12 and started checking what the experience would be like once Apple rolls it out officially sometime later this year.
Unfortunately, in my testing, I found out there’s going to be a huge problem, and it’s not Apple’s fault; it’s Google’s.Google Messages sends super-compressed images over RCS
In the US, if you’re on Android and using RCS, you’re likely using Google Messages. Although Samsung Messages also supports RCS in some locations, let’s focus on Google’s app for now. We’ll get to Samsung’s in a bit.
Although Google Messages is probably the best messaging app you can use for texting on Android, it unfortunately compresses the images it sends significantly. This is not really news, but it might not be something you’re aware of. To catch you up, in 2023, Google added a new toggle in Messages’ settings called Send photos faster. This is automatically toggled on and compresses all images you send. To see the toggle for yourself, open Messages, tap your profile avatar, then go to Messages settings, and the toggle will be the first one you see.
Here’s an example of what happens when you have this toggled on. The original image (captured with a Galaxy S24 Ultra) is on the left, and the image sent through Google Messages (received by a Pixel 8 Pro) is on the right. Note how much lower of a resolution the received image has, as well as its significant reduction in both megapixel count and file size:
As you can see, the original 50MP image was reduced to 1.
