Google is making a handful of announcements related to
RCS today, but the piece of news you’re most likely to notice is that
the default SMS app Google offers is now called “Android Messages”
instead of “Messenger.” Or rather, it will be the default RCS app. RCS,
if you don’t recall, is the next-generation messaging standard
supported by a group of carriers and Google. It offers multimedia
messages, read receipts, and other features you’d expect from a normal
chat app like WhatsApp or iMessage.
Amir Sarhangi, Head of RCS at Google, tells The Verge
that the app is getting renamed because Android Messages is becoming
more like Android itself: an industry effort spearheaded by Google, but
with other stakeholders involved (namely: the carriers). The new name is
also a signal to users that the app fully supports RCS. Users will be
able to download the Android Messages app directly from the Play Store —
which gives the added benefit that the app can be updated directly
rather than make people wait for a software update from their
manufacturer.
But “default messaging app” is a very fraught idea on Android, where Google is pursuing a three-fold app strategy
that also includes Allo and Hangouts. In this context, what it really
means is that a slew of Android manufacturers have agreed to use Android
Messenger instead of a custom app made by the manufacturer. That list
includes:
LG, Motorola, Sony, HTC, ZTE, Micromax, Nokia, Archos, BQ, Cherry Mobile, Condor, Fly, General Mobile, Lanix, LeEco, Lava, Kyocera, MyPhone, QMobile, Symphony and Wiko, along with Pixel and Android One devices.
Along with the app update, Google has announced that a bunch of wireless carriers have agreed to adopt the “Universal Profile”
for RCS, meaning their rich text messages are guaranteed to work when
you send them. Some of them are using Google’s RCS service and others
are just doing it themselves. The carriers on board with this messaging
standard include: Sprint, Rogers, Telenor, Orange, Deutsche Telekom,
Globe, and Vodafone.
Google says that if you add up all the carriers together,
it comes to over a billion people who will be on the new RCS standard.
But if you read those lists closely, you’ll see that the most important
phone makers — Samsung and Apple — are not included. You’ll also see
that the most important carriers in the US — Verizon, AT&T, and
T-Mobile — are also not included.
What will that mean? As with all things related to carriers, RCS, and standards: it’s complicated.
The short answer is that if you send an RCS message to a
phone or carrier that isn’t part of this RCS standard, your message will
fall back to standard SMS or MMS. The longer answer is that Google is
very much hoping that to create a snowball effect that will bring those
other companies in line with the standard. “It’s a momentum story for
us,” Sarhangi says.
He couldn’t comment on whether Google is actively
negotiating with any of those big players to come on board with the RCS
standard, but at least with regard to Apple, Sarhangi notes that “we
welcome them” to join.
The good news is that even though all this sort of sounds
like a mess, it’s not a mess that will really affect consumers in a
direct way — even in the worst case scenarios of incompatibility,
Android Messages will still just fall back to SMS.
And the potential benefits are big. Alongside the other
announcements, Google said that it’s creating an “Early Access Program”
for businesses to send messages via RCS. That will mean that the texts
you get for stuff like boarding passes and data plan overages will be
more than dumb links to websites. Businesses will be able to send
messages that can act like little apps — the QR code for the train will
be right there and the option to re-up your data when you get an overage
alert will be a simple button in the message. Those messages will also
come “verified” from their sender instead of from a random short code
number.
But if the idea of getting better marketing messages from
business isn’t exciting, focus on the positives. First, a bunch of
Android manufacturers are going to stop making crappy SMS apps and just
go with Android Messages instead. Second, a big part of the wireless
industry is finally moving away from SMS toward something better.
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