Google has taken the wraps off of new Messages features, taking aim at Apple’s iMessages and calling out Apple for not supporting broader standards.
The incompatibility between iMessages and the rest of the texting world, comprised largely of Android, has been getting widespread attention lately. Apple’s service is a proprietary protocol that is significantly better than standard SMS, providing group administration, read receipts, file sharing, end-to-end encryption, and much more. In contrast, until recently, Android has relied on basic SMS, which lacks all of those advanced features.
To address the issue, Google has adopted RCS, the successor to SMS. The new protocol adds most, if not all, of the features included in iMessages. The biggest weakness of the new protocol, however, is the fact that Apple has not adopted it. As a result, when iPhone and Android users text each other, the messages fall back to basic SMS with all its limitations.
Google’s latest update works to address two of the biggest issues: emoji reactions and poor quality media.
When iPhone users use an emoji reaction, it has always come across spelled out rather than as an emoji. For example, laughing at a message would come across as “John Doe laughed at…” Similarly, when sending photos or videos, Android significantly reduces the quality in an effort to make them compatible with the archaic SMS protocol.
Google’s latest update to Messages maps iMessages emoji reactions to the appropriate Android emoji. In addition, rather than send large photos and videos through SMS, where they will be reduced to a blurry mess, Messages will send a link to the iPhone user, giving them a way to view the original media file as it was meant to be seen.
In the meantime, Google minced no words in pointing out its belief that Apple should adopt the RCS standard:
But these new updates can only do so much. We encourage Apple to join the rest of the mobile industry and adopt RCS so that we can make messaging better and more secure, no matter what device you choose.