iPhones now support RCS messaging on 16 US carriers, enabling features like read receipts and typing indicators. But some carriers are still holding out—find out if yours made the list.
Here's the list of US carriers that now support RCS messaging on iPhones:
All this and I still have 2 regular group chats with android friends who’s phones are not using RCS. I went from feeling bad I have an iPhone to being annoyed their androids are not using RCS.
I don't really understand RCS. It's supposed to be an open standard but unfortunately it's only available in 1 of 2 Android apps, which are controlled by Samsung or Google. Personally, I don't have a Google or Samsung account, and these don't work without them.
They could have just used the actually open standard they already used 10 years ago (XMPP) but for some reason they've found some other one that doesn't appear to be very open.
Basically an early version of Wi-Fi calling before Wi-Fi calling was a thing. You signed up for a SIM-free phone number tied to your Google account that allowed you to make calls as long as you had Internet. Calls between US numbers were totally free, even if the Google voice person was in a different country
Anyway, Google voice is still around and has an app. So if you have a Google voice number, you have a totally separate dialer and text message set up, that's distinct from the one for your regular number. But, as I mentioned, the text message part still doesn't support RCS. Pretty embarrassing for Google