Picture: Apple
Google let slip that Apple will fulfill its promise so as to add help for Wealthy Communication Providers to the iPhone Messages app “within the fall of 2024.”
That just about definitely means iPhone and Android customers will get pleasure from increased high quality cross-platform texting with the discharge of iOS 18 and never earlier than.
iMessage may get RCS in late 2024
iPhone and Android customers can already trade easy SMS and MMS messages. However as a result of iMessage doesn’t help Wealthy Communication Providers, what might be included in texts despatched between the platforms is restricted. There are not any emoji reactions, learn receipts or different superior options.
And that’s the best way issues stayed for years, regardless of ongoing appeals from Android-maker Google.
However final November, Apple committed to adding RCS to iMessage. It’s attainable the change is the results of behind-the-scenes stress from the U.S. Division of Justice because it ready the blockbuster antitrust lawsuit against Apple filed in mid March.
Picture: Killian Bell/Cult of Mac
Nonetheless, when the iPhone-maker made the dedication it didn’t give a really particular timeline, simply saying in late 2023 that the change would occur “later subsequent yr.”
Google revealed a bit extra, although apparently with out clearing it with Apple first. A brand new landing page for Google Messages (noticed by 9to5Google) famous, “Apple has introduced it is going to be adopting RCS within the fall of 2024.”
The word has since been eliminated, although it’s nonetheless available via the Wayback Machine.
That appears to be a transparent indication that RCS help is coming to iMessage in iOS 18, which is predicted to launch in September 2024. That was already doubtless based mostly on Apple’s personal remark about timing, however this is perhaps a affirmation that RCS help gained’t arrive in an upcoming iOS 17 replace.
We’ll doubtless discover out for positive in June at Apple’s WWDC24 when the following iPhone working system will likely be introduced.
