Green Bubble Chats on IPhone Still Have Problems
Last year, Apple announced that it would finally bring RCS support to iPhones with iOS 18. It was big news: for the first time, text messaging between iPhone and Android didn’t absolutely suck. Although RCS arrived on the iPhone with Apple’s big update, unfortunately the full promise of RCS has yet to be realized.
What is RKS?
To fully understand the issue, it is important to know what RCS actually is. RCS stands for Rich Communication Services and is essentially an enhanced version of SMS: the platform supports modern messaging features such as pop-up messages, high-quality image and video sharing, functional group chats and end-to-end encryption. SMS does not support these features, so using them, especially in group settings, can be difficult.
RCS isn’t available on all Android messaging services, but if your partner’s Android installation supports it and it’s enabled on your iPhone, your conversations should feel very similar to iMessaging between other iPhones (minus the green bubbles, of course). Now most of these features currently work: you will be able to see when they are printing; you should be able to send high-resolution photos and videos; and group chats should work the same as between iPhones. There’s just one big problem.
RCS on iOS is not encrypted
Currently, messages sent and received via RCS between iPhone and Android are not end-to-end encrypted. This means that any conversations you have with your friends on Android are vulnerable because these messages are sent without modern security measures.
For those of us on iOS, this isn’t an anomaly: if you’re used to texting with Android users, those chats weren’t encrypted either. But the promise of RCS for iOS includes encrypted messaging. When you see this RCS tag in your green chat, you need to be sure that no one other than the chat participants can read these messages.
However, RCS is also not end-to-end encrypted everywhere. Google Messages is the largest platform to support end-to-end encryption by default via RCS. Samsung Messages, for example, doesn’t do this. Additionally, the GSMA, which develops RCS, says it is working on end-to-end encryption for RCS on iPhone . Soon enough, the iPhone may have an RCS feature that some Android messaging platforms don’t have.
However, this does not change the fact that some may use RCS with misunderstood assumptions about its security: until this future update, RCS messages on iPhone are never end-to-end encrypted. If you want all your conversations with your friends to be secure, you need to use encrypted messaging platforms like Signal or WhatsApp. Again, iMessage is end-to-end encrypted by default, so no worries.
Other RCS issues on iOS
Security isn’t the only issue with RCS on iPhone at the moment . Additionally, you may have trouble sending RCS messages when your Wi-Fi signal is weak, although these messages can also be sent over a cellular network. If you send a sticker from iPhone to Android phone, it will disappear after a few seconds. Additionally, scheduled messages ( a new feature in iOS 18 ) will only be sent when Apple devices are included in the chat.
Apple has room to improve RCS. Of course, it’s still better than SMS. Even if the bubbles are still green, I’m just glad I can share videos with my friends on Android.
Android users: Everyone can see your group chat names
If you’re an Android user who’s used to the way things work in Google Messages, listen up: Group chat names are n’t private when messaging on iPhone .
In Google Messages, you can rename a group whatever you want, and only you will see it. This is useful for keeping track of specific groups without worrying about other people in the group knowing how you labeled the chat. However, when it comes to iOS, things are different. iPhone users know that group chat names can be controlled by all group members and are public: when one person changes the group name, it changes for everyone.
If you’re new to iPhone messaging via RCS and you have one of these in a group chat, don’t change the name to something you won’t like if everyone in the group sees it too.