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Upgrading Messaging on Android in the U.S. with RCS

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Re: Upgrading Messaging on Android in the U.S. with RCS

#53
post #28
post #8

I've only got a cursory understanding of RCS, but in what way is this good for consumers? I can understand how it's good for Google, but aside from Google it's unclear how anyone benefits.

> I've only got a cursory understanding of RCS Try `man rcs`. Heh. I hate name collisions.

Something something naming things.. ;)

Re: Upgrading Messaging on Android in the U.S. with RCS

#54

There was a time when I really thought Google was going to shake things up. Nexus Phones, Google Fiber, Google Fi, etc all sounded awesome. I bought a Nexus 5, switched to Fi, went through the super fun process of mixing around my google voice numbers, (breaking all kinds of stuff) but eventually I was mostly setup and functional. I'd lost some core parts of gVoice, but I figured it was just a matter of time before i…

Exactly my experience. I finally bit the bullet and switched to the Apple side. There are things I miss from android but I trust Apple not to self sabotage much more than I trust Google these days. Which is weird, and exactly the opposite of the feeling I had 5 years ago.

Re: Upgrading Messaging on Android in the U.S. with RCS

#55

There was a time when I really thought Google was going to shake things up. Nexus Phones, Google Fiber, Google Fi, etc all sounded awesome. I bought a Nexus 5, switched to Fi, went through the super fun process of mixing around my google voice numbers, (breaking all kinds of stuff) but eventually I was mostly setup and functional. I'd lost some core parts of gVoice, but I figured it was just a matter of time before i…

Very similar experience here. I'm gathering energy to try leaving Google/Android all together for whatever awaits me with a pinephone (not yet available afaik). https://www.pine64.org/pinephone/

Thinking that I much prefer an interesting "how to do x thing I want to add to my experience" over an "oh I'm being corralled into undesired xyz by Google again, how to maintain / return to normal functions"

Re: Upgrading Messaging on Android in the U.S. with RCS

#56

There was a time when I really thought Google was going to shake things up. Nexus Phones, Google Fiber, Google Fi, etc all sounded awesome. I bought a Nexus 5, switched to Fi, went through the super fun process of mixing around my google voice numbers, (breaking all kinds of stuff) but eventually I was mostly setup and functional. I'd lost some core parts of gVoice, but I figured it was just a matter of time before i…

Exactly my experience. I finally bit the bullet and switched to the Apple side. There are things I miss from android but I trust Apple not to self sabotage much more than I trust Google these days. Which is weird, and exactly the opposite of the feeling I had 5 years ago.

I'm in this situation right now - was just debating buying an iPhone yesterday after never owning anything from Apple. How do you like it so far?

Re: Upgrading Messaging on Android in the U.S. with RCS

#57
post #28
post #8

I've only got a cursory understanding of RCS, but in what way is this good for consumers? I can understand how it's good for Google, but aside from Google it's unclear how anyone benefits.

> I've only got a cursory understanding of RCS Try `man rcs`. Heh. I hate name collisions.

My first thought on seeing the post was "What do reaction control system have to do with android?"

Re: Upgrading Messaging on Android in the U.S. with RCS

#58

There was a time when I really thought Google was going to shake things up. Nexus Phones, Google Fiber, Google Fi, etc all sounded awesome. I bought a Nexus 5, switched to Fi, went through the super fun process of mixing around my google voice numbers, (breaking all kinds of stuff) but eventually I was mostly setup and functional. I'd lost some core parts of gVoice, but I figured it was just a matter of time before i…

Exactly my experience. I finally bit the bullet and switched to the Apple side. There are things I miss from android but I trust Apple not to self sabotage much more than I trust Google these days. Which is weird, and exactly the opposite of the feeling I had 5 years ago.

I also made the switch somewhat recently, as I've had iPhones as company devices for awhile now. I'm no Apple fan-boy, but at least having a relatively solid feeling device that does what you expect 90% of the time and doesn't change core functionality without at least some warning is a great feeling.

Re: Upgrading Messaging on Android in the U.S. with RCS

#59
post #47
post #4

Can anyone confirm the biggest issue (in my opinion) with RCS? It's not end-to-end encrypted. Update: Confirmed it myself [1]. End-to-end encryption is not even an option. Which is perfect for the data addicts like Google. But honestly I would never ever recommend this as an avenue for people to use over something like WhatsApp. [1]: https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/14/20964477/googles-rcs-cha...

It's almost certainly the carriers imposing this restriction. The reason these features took so long is because, as they did for SMS, every single carrier across the world has to get on board with this. , so I'm sure that's the reason it's not encrypted. The Messages app might be a Google product, but the underlying transport has to be implemented by carriers, and I'm sure there are many, many carriers who aren't int…

> the Messages app might be a Google product, but the underlying transport has to be implemented by carriers

That design flaw can be attributed to Google.

Re: Upgrading Messaging on Android in the U.S. with RCS

#60
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a phone based messaging medium. If you have a phone number, you can send a message. That's not nothing. I know the phone numbers of far more people than I know the name of their apple account, or google account, or facebook account, or whatever. The general answer to that is to exchange account information, but the easiest way to do that is through SMS... and here we are. Upgrading SMS so it's better. It's not p…

Knowing someone's phone number means you can reach them on WhatsApp. At least, that's true for 2B (out of 5B) of phone numbers, which is likely to be 1,000 times the number of RCS users. The second and most important advantage of WhatsApp is that you don't have to maintain an address book anymore. People change phone numbers and the new number is automatically reflected in WhatsApp. It's quite likely that address boo…

...valuable if you conveniently forget who owns WhatsApp.
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