With RCS rolling out on the iPhone yesterday, Google is looking ahead on new features including cross-platform end-to-end encryption (E2EE) between Android and iPhone.
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Apple today is rolling out iOS 18 with support for RCS in a huge boost to the iPhone-Android messaging experience.
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The Android website has added a new landing page for Google Messages that talks about the first-party messaging experience, while also noting that RCS on the iPhone is coming in fall 2024.
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Before Google’s “Get The Message” campaign in August, Android’s Messages app was updated with iMessage reactions at the start of this year. In a very weird turn of events, Apple appears to be taking credit for Google adding iMessage reactions on Android.
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In recent weeks, Google has been testing and slowly rolling out a number of new features for Messages on Android. The company announced today that iMessage reactions, Google Photos integration, and several other capabilities will soon widely launch.
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As we spotted in November and following the latest push for RCS support on iPhone earlier this month, Google Messages is starting to roll out iMessage reactions in beta for Android users.
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Over the past year, Google has publicly pressured Apple to support Rich Communication Services. The latest salvo this weekend was the harshest yet, but RCS on the iPhone is not the panacea to Google’s historical messaging woes, nor will support lead to a transformatively better experience for Android users when interacting with their iPhone counterparts.
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After critical comments on Saturday, Android chief Hiroshi Lockheimer is back with some “thoughts and clarifications” on RCS and iMessage.
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The latest update to Google Messages prepares for a new way to handle the annoying iMessage reaction messages often seen in mixed group chats.
Update: This feature has already begun rolling out for some, allowing us to see it in action.
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Messaging has always been a tough point for Android phones compared to iPhones simply because iMessage is, put simply, very good both for its experience and its security. As Google finally solves that problem with expanded adoption of RCS with end-to-end encryption, the company is pushing for its rival, Apple, to do the same by pointing out that the current fallback method instantly drops security.
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