It's taken a few years, but Google has finally announced that the new Rich Communications Services (RCS) messaging standard it's developing to replace the nearly 30-year-old Short Message Service (SMS) standard is now available globally - for anyone, who uses androidphone and the native Messages app. In addition, the technology giant announced another important news – it introduces end-to-end encryption to RCS.
The feature isn't fully implemented yet – according to Google, beta testers will begin testing one-to-one RCS chat encryption in November, and it will roll out to more users early next year.
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RCS messages will be encrypted automatically and both participants will need to use the Messages app with chat features enabled. While Google hasn't said when the feature will leave beta, it looks like the app is in open public beta, meaning users should get the feature sooner rather than later.
Just a reminder – the RCS standard offers improved photo and video quality, sending and receiving messages over Wi-Fi, improved group chat capabilities, the ability to send responses to messages, and the ability to see when others are reading chats. If these functions are familiar to you, you are not mistaken - they are used by the popular social and communication platforms Messenger, WhatsApp or Telegram. Thanks to RCS, the News application will become a social platform of its kind.
