Have you heard about RCS (Rich Communication Services) messaging? It is becoming the industry standard for modern messaging. RCS is the new standard of messaging that will replace SMS text messaging and MMS. RCS makes it fast and easy to send more information in a message. This means richer text features, higher-resolution images and videos, and much more.
Whereas present texting with SMS/MMS requires a data connection to your cellular service, RCS also works over cell networks or Wi-Fi.
February 14, 2022 9to5Google.com reported that Samsung has finally adopted Google Messages as its default app in the United States. Read more here.
How do you know if you can use it on your device? Check in your app settings – possibly the CHAT features. Look to see if RCS is available and enabled.
FROM DIGITAL TRENDS: Google now offers RCS chat worldwide via its Android Messages app to all users who install and use it as a default texting app. With Google’s rollout of RCS as Android’s primary texting platform for Android Messages, many Android phones already come with Android Messages installed. A partnership between Google and Samsung allows RCS features to work seamlessly between the Samsung Messages and Android Messages apps, the default SMS apps on their devices. You can also hop on to the Google Play Store to download Messages yourself.
The invention of text messaging predates the iPhone, BlackBerry, and Palm Pilot. SMS was first proposed in 1982 for the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM), a second-generation cell standard devised by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI).
The idea was to transmit texts via the signaling systems that controlled telephone traffic. ETSI engineers developed a framework that was both small enough to fit into the existing signaling paths (128 bytes, later improved to 160 seven-bit characters) and modular enough to support carrier management features like real-time billing, message rerouting (routing messages to a recipient other than the one specified by the user), and message blocking.
After nearly a decade of tinkering, SMS deployed commercially in December 1992 — a milestone that Neil Papworth, an engineer, marked by texting Merry Christmas to Vodafone customer Richard Jarvis. From then on, handset manufacturers and carriers climbed aboard the messaging bandwagon. By 2010, nearly 20 years after the first text message, cell subscribers exchanged 6.1 trillion messages.
Despite the explosive growth of SMS, the tech didn’t evolve all that much from the 1990s. Even as phone form factors changed and Apple’s iPhone popularized the modern-day touchscreen smartphone, SMS remained the same — right down to the 160-character limit.