The move from the Short Message Service (SMS) to Rich Communication Services (RCS) has been slow, but a step towards a broader adoption, at least in Android circles has been announced by Google and Huawei today with the Chinese vendor announcing they’ll adopt Google’s Jibe powered RCS messaging.
Purchased by Google back in 2015, the Jibe RCS cloud and hub is the backbone of Google’s RCS push which is being offered to current and prospective carrier partners.
As part of the adoption of the Jibe RCS cloud and hub, Huawei will begin offering Android Messsages app on their smartphones. The release says that Huawei will be ‘integrating Android Messages, powered by RCS, across their Android smartphone portfolio’, which could see the app deployed to their current and future handsets via an update.
The perception of OEMs using their own SMS clients on Android phones has been a source of frustration over the years, so this announcement means one less.
Telstra announced they would start their RCS rollout with Samsung devices last year, but it’s a decidedly proprietary solution. Now if only we could see RCS adoption from Vodafone and Optus, we may see a unified RCS profile adopted across Australia if we’re lucky.
Android messages doesn’t work on the mate 10 Pro. I’ve posted the problem on the community already.
Try Textra? That’s RCS compatible (or will be soon) and it’s better than Android messages anyway