Categories: Tech News

“It’s time” to fix text messages between iPhones and Android smartphones

Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

Google sends a message back to Apple: fix text messaging problems between Android devices and iPhones.

For years, consumers have expressed annoyance with the handling of text messages on smartphones between the two major messaging platforms: Apple-owned iMessage and Google’s Messages app, which uses Rich Communications Services ( RCS).

Both platforms supercharge regular text messages, enabling features such as higher quality images, read receipts, text effects, enhanced security, reactions, and other benefits. But since the platforms aren’t compatible, texting between iPhones and Androids reverts to plain old texting.

This lack of interoperability is a major annoyance, for some. Android to iPhone texts appear in a green bubble on an iPhone while iPhone to iPhone messages arrive in blue bubbles (standard texts appear in light gray on both platforms).

Messages between Android and Apple phones are converted to SMS (Short Message Service) and MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) texts, which Google charges are “obsolete technologies from the 90s and 00s.” As a result, images sent in messages between Android and iPhone are compressed, according to Google, and users can’t tell if messages have been received and read. Google has claimed that this distinction leads to “peer pressure and bullying” in favor of iMessages and iPhones.

Google is back on the offensive with a website encouraging Apple to adopt RCS for interoperable messaging systems.

“It’s not the color of the bubbles. It’s the blurry videos, broken group chats, missing read receipts and write indicators, no Wi-Fi texting, and more,” he says. the google site. “These problems exist because Apple refuses to adopt modern texting standards when people with iPhones and Android phones text each other.”

When Google’s “Apple Should Fix What’s Broken” website went live on Tuesday, tech news site Business Insider wrote how “Some users have long lamented the green message bubbles that come with cross-device messaging, as well as poor quality compressed videos, lack of read receipts and other headaches.”

If Apple adopted RCS, according to Google, messages between Android and Apple smartphones would look better and be encrypted.

Apple did not return Today’s request for comment on the Google campaign. But in the past, the company has found fault with RCS, citing how it doesn’t offer full end-to-end encryption.

This is not a new campaign for Google. Back in May at the tech giant’s I/O conference, Android VP of product management Sameer Samat announced how Android had more than 500 million RCS users and put the competition on the line: “We expect all mobile operating systems to receive the message and updates to RCS.”

However, Apple didn’t bite. The following month, at its own WWDC keynote, Apple made no mention of RCS and announced new features for its messaging platform, including options to recall or edit recently sent messages.

Apple could increase interoperability between Android and iOS devices, but it may not be in the company’s best interest, CNET Senior Editor Mike Sorrentino said in a column. “Apple often touts its control over iOS as a selling point for consumers, and moving away from iMessage could jeopardize that.”


Google says Apple’s iMessage and its blue message bubbles dominate because of bullying


(c) 2022 USA Today

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Subpoena: Google to Apple: ‘It’s time’ to fix texting between iPhones and Android smartphones (2022, August 15) Retrieved August 15, 2022, from https://techxplore.com/news/2022 -08-google-apple-text-messages-iphones.html

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