In November, last year in the USA and U.K. and various other countries to replace traditional SMS messaging, Google rolled out Rich Communication Services (RCS)
The successor of SMS messaging and a competitor to Apple’s iMessage. The only thing that this service was missing was end-to-end encryption. You’ll be happy to know; soon this will also be taken care of. According to a report from 9to5Google soon, RCS messaging will have end-to-end encryption like iMessage, WhatsApp, and Signal.
What is RCS Messaging?
Rich Communication Services protocol popularly known as Chat, is an advanced take on texting already included in Facebook Messenger, iMessage, and other popular chat applications. RCS brings sending & receiving high-resolution images, getting read receipts, and seeing when someone is replying in real-time all into one platform.
Indeed, you are already accessing all this, but not when sending SMS. With RCS Messaging, you will be able to enjoy all this when sending SMS. Alongside, it will replace the insecure SMS message with an end to end encrypted text system that is more advanced and can transmit in-call multimedia.
Why is Google bringing RCS Messaging?
To make communications more unified and to allow users to chat from within the messaging app, Google is rolling out RCS Messaging.
Using it, users will be able to chat over mobile data or Wi-Fi and share high-resolution photos and videos. Also, they will be able to see if people have received your latest messages.
Benefits of RCS Messaging
- Send and receive better quality photos.
- Read receipts
- Advanced tweaks that one would want in a chatting app on the phone
Added Security for Google Messages
Now, while sending SMS, you don’t have to worry about security. With end-to-end-encryption being added to Google Messages, other apps will be stopped from reading your encrypted messages. This is an exciting update.
Undoubtedly, Android users will love it as this was what was missing for them. Now like iMessage there SMS will also be secured.
Sadly, we cannot say when these features will be added to the stable version of Google Messages as they were spotted inside dogfood build.
This seems it will take quite a good time to roll out.
But it’s true Google is pushing RCS and making it end-to-end-encrypted so that it can stand against iMessage and be a strong competitor