Today, after much anticipation, Apple has revealed that iOS 18’s Messages app will support RCS. SMS will no longer be the default communication protocol used by Android and iOS smartphones in favor of the new standard. The action was taken following years of teasing, bribing, and eventually some regulatory oversight from the EU.

Unfortunately, aside from the fact that iOS 18 will have it, we don’t know much else. At least one illustration of how RCS will appear on an iPhone may be found on Apple’s website regarding the impending release. The text box displays “RCS” to signify a connection; other than that, everything is very conventional.

Currently, communications between users on iOS and Android devices are truncated, images and videos are delivered at a poorer quality, and crucially, conversations are not end-to-end secured as they are in iMessage. Instead, the service reverts to SMS. There is pandemonium when messages from Android phones appear in iMessage chats as green bubbles.

Rich Communication Services, or RCS, was created to take the place of SMS. RCS supports higher-quality photos and videos, lets you send lengthier messages, and provides typing hints and read receipts. To put it another way, it resembles iMessage a lot. Over the past five years, US wireless carriers have fully adopted it, making it the official messaging protocol on Android phones; nevertheless, Apple has been obstinately refusing to implement it. Some of those iMessage-like capabilities will soon be accessible in cross-platform talks starting with iOS 18.

It’s unlikely that Google and Samsung’s pressure to implement RCS is what finally convinced Apple to make the switch. Seemingly out of the blue, the corporation declared in November that it will be adding RCS support in the next year. However, it’s unlikely that the timing was random; Apple’s announcement was undoubtedly made in an attempt to placate EU regulators.