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Need a replacement messaging app for Samsung
(lemmy.ml)
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this post was submitted on 15 Feb 2026
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Textra doesn't support RCS yet either so even if you don't use RCS, that's one reason it's not a full replacement. There really is nothing comprehensive right now that will give you all of the features, as far as I'm aware.
Nothing will support RCS except Google Messages. Google closed the source and extensibility of the messaging framework quite a while back. Around the time Signal dropped SMS support.
Why would anyone need RCS? What is RCS?
It's like SMS, a messaging standard. But compared to SMS, RCS enables features like end to end encryption, larger file attachments, rich text formatting, and much more. It is the new standard of messaging. Even iPhone texting is getting RCS support. I believe at some point SMS should die entirely and be replaced with RCS. It's more secure, less spoofable, more convenient, and feature rich.
It is not any standard at all, while it's limited to two companies and their apps in their closed ecosystems.
Except it's closed down and cannot be used by non-Google apps. Not an issue with the protocol itself, but that's the reality on Android. Let alone iOS.
It can absolutely be used on iOS. In fact, it's already partially implemented and iOS is about to roll out end to end encryption in RCS as well.
Granted I don't use iOS so I might have missed it, but can you give an example of a third party texting app that can use RCS on iOS?
I thought the situation is the same as on Android - third party apps can only use SMS, not RCS.
Third party apps can't even SMS on iOS. On Apple's platform, you use their apps or you don't get the feature. The iOS implementation of RCS doesn't even yet support encryption. Apple is testing encryption between Apple devices.
That Apple and Google both hold the keys to what started out as an open GSMA standard, and now have a closed-source platform screams never trust it.