Upgrading Messaging on Android in the U.S. with RCS • Hacker News Board

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

#141

Post by nwallin » Fri, Nov 15, 2019, 4:31 AM UTC

endorphone wrote: post #70

AcerbicZero wrote: post #46

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…

Pretty much exactly the path I took. I truly believed Google was set to change the world for the better. I had every Nexus device (and pre-Nexus with the Magic and Dream), watched every Google move with anticipation, etc. The 6P was the last Nexus I owned -- miserable battery life and poor experience that it brought -- though I held on with Android a bit longer with the Galaxy line. I developed several apps on the pl…

The 3a is properly priced. I hope they keep the -a thing going. I can't imagine a world where I'd pay $600+ for a phone. We're at the point now where all you're buying is a new battery and 18 more months of security updates. More RAM, faster CPU, what's the point? I'm not playing high end games, content creation, or compiling software on my phone.

If they don't keep -a going, then they've blown it. The Nexus line was great.

They've also already totally blown it with all the texting bullshit. Hangouts is awesome. Carrier based texting is a significant step backwards.

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

#142

Post by mantap » Fri, Nov 15, 2019, 5:22 AM UTC

justin66 wrote: post #132

benguild wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is: most people won’t care or know the difference. This is going to strong arm things away from the messaging app market and iMessage.

One really obvious thing for Apple to do, which has always been a really obvious thing for Apple to do, would be to distribute a version of iMessage on Android.

iMessage is literally the single most important selling point of iPhones in the US. Apple is never going to do that.

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

#143

Post by grzm » Fri, Nov 15, 2019, 5:29 AM UTC

mantap wrote: post #142

justin66 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One really obvious thing for Apple to do, which has always been a really obvious thing for Apple to do, would be to distribute a version of iMessage on Android.

iMessage is literally the single most important selling point of iPhones in the US. Apple is never going to do that.

> "iMessage is literally the single most important selling point of iPhones in the US."

Given the lack of emphasis Apple puts on iMessage in their marketing, it seems unlikely it's the single most important selling point. On the opening page for the newest iPhone, it's mentioned in a single sentence in a paragraph on Security down near the bottom of the page, hardly pride of place.

https://www.apple.com/iphone-11-pro/

Granted, I don't see Apple opening iMessage for other platforms for a number of reasons, including product differentiation, but at least Apple seems to think there are many more features to highlight before getting around to iMessage.

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

#144

Post by kbenson » Fri, Nov 15, 2019, 6:17 AM UTC

dmix wrote: post #139

kbenson wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But RCS seems to be trying to bring SMS to parity with messaging apps supporting emoticons and media-heavy content I think it's more that RCS is attempting to bring SMS into the 21st century, if barely. Those aren't exactly amazing features, they're the lowest bar for entry you could meet for a messaging app in 2010. 2019 has a much higher bar, as everyone here is noting.

It's not just the features but them combined with a very cleanly designed messaging app ala WhatsApp. They aren't amazing or new on their own but they've become standard and essential in the 3rd party messaging apps. There's a lot RCS is going to do to make SMS difficult to distinguish from WhatsApp for most people, especially these days as they've matured and everyone has finished copying the other guy.

To be clear, I was saying the RCS features aren't exactly amazing, and are 2010 level standard, not that WhatsApp's features aren't good.

If the base level RCS features make it hard for WhatsApp to stand out, and the base level RCS features are really fairly poor in comparison to what can be offered, that begs the question of what WhatsApp is bringing that's worth it's use. End-to-end encryption is the answer, but there's other apps that may do that better.

If the real big differentiator is end-to-end encryption, then I think the solution isn't to push people to not use RCS, which has inherent qualities that mean it will always have at least some market, but after it's here we immediately push for extensions to it that allow end-to-end encryption. If that's accomplished, that immediately sets the real floor for every messaging app, and if they aren't offering the same the two questions are why bother with it at all if the built in stuff is better, and why aren't they doing it if it's the market floor, what are they gaining from being able to see the messages?

SMS is the lowest common denominator of messaging. RCS will be the lowest common denominator of messaging. We should use this opportunity to cement that, and then keep the momentum up and use it to push for other essential features like encryption.

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

#145

Post by pertymcpert » Fri, Nov 15, 2019, 6:46 AM UTC

what_ever wrote: post #98

organsnyder wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just replaced my Pixel XL with a used iPhone X last week. One thing that I'm struck by is I don't get the feeling that the device is trying to monopolize my attention. It could just be because I still have more friction with it (due to it being unfamiliar), but I wonder if it's also because Apple and Google have very different business objectives: Apple doesn't have nearly the same interest in the quantity of my en…

I have to disagree on that one. One thing iOS does better to not let apps allow notifications by default. But other than that notifications are much better on Android and it's also a lot easier to disable notifications on Android now. I think it has to do with you being unfamiliar with the phone and more friction that comes with it.

iOS has pretty good notification management now, what's missing?

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

#146

Post by aitchnyu » Fri, Nov 15, 2019, 7:01 AM UTC

Would this work where mobile internet is slow or non existent? Would this break dependence on having Firebase as the power-efficicent centralized push system? Will this have delivery receipts? Can this be used as a transport for E2EE apps?

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

#147

Post by pjmlp » Fri, Nov 15, 2019, 7:38 AM UTC

sorenjan wrote: post #79

endorphone wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much exactly the path I took. I truly believed Google was set to change the world for the better. I had every Nexus device (and pre-Nexus with the Magic and Dream), watched every Google move with anticipation, etc. The 6P was the last Nexus I owned -- miserable battery life and poor experience that it brought -- though I held on with Android a bit longer with the Galaxy line. I developed several apps on the pl…

We often hear about all the great engineers at Google, but their project managers must be some of the worst in the industry. So many half baked and forgotten projects that wasn't good enough when they came out, left with few and slow upgrades, and then killed off. How many messaging apps have Google launched and killed? How many WearOS watches have they sold? How's the Android tablet ecosystem? How did the Nexus rebr…

The state of NDK is a good example.

It appeared that the Android team was kind of forced to support C++ for game developers, and they did an half baked release with Android 2.0.

Using headers and toolchains different than what regular Android (internal Google teams) were using, thus took them all the way up to release 14 to actually provide unified headers.

Bionic wasn't fully ISO C compliant and has been being improved throughout all the NDK and Android releases.

Back when they decided to drop Eclipse there wasn't a roadmap for C++ support going forward, and they were kind of rescued after JetBrains decided to create CLion, which they took up to integrate into Android Studio, almost two years later.

There were two reboots for new build system tools, until they decided to keep ndk-build around and settle with CMake as alternative.

Even though the NDK APIs are written in C++ (or C++ wrappers over JNI calls), they are exposed as extern "C" to userspace, thus being more prone to unsafe coding pratices.

Only now they are starting to think about supporting NDK package management, so far each Android NDK developer using AARs had to come up with in-house solutions to package NDK libraries across projects.

Small rant, plenty of other stuff to complain about. However I would also like to add that the (apparently) small NDK team has improved the experience a lot, when comparing with what the Android 2.0 NDK state started from.

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

#148

Post by kalleboo » Fri, Nov 15, 2019, 7:45 AM UTC

frosted-flakes wrote: post #126

copperx wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's interesting is that in other countries such as Mexico, there is no such thing as SMS. Yes, SMS exists but nobody uses it. Nobody. You either send a WhatsApp message or you can't communicate.

Nobody uses even the Messages application on iOS? Somehow, I doubt that.

It's the same situation in Japan. I've lived here for 5 years and literally never, not once, sent or received a message to anyone else here in Japan using the iOS Messages app. LINE messenger penetration is 100%. You don't ask for someone's phone number, you ask for their LINE username. And if you want to call them you use LINE's voice calling feature (which uses data so doesn't cost you minutes). I don't have anyone's personal phone number aside from my wife. Even my elderly mother-in-law makes calls using LINE.

My iOS Messages app is just pages and pages of phone number verification and 2FA texts, and then one group chat with remote coworkers abroad.

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

#149

Post by tuxracer » Fri, Nov 15, 2019, 7:53 AM UTC

toast0 wrote: post #137

awill wrote: post #110

RCS has completely blown up in Google's face. They should have just copied Apple and created gMessage

They did: Google Talk/gChat, Hangouts, Allo, Duo, Wave (I think it did messaging, I don't really know). There's probably more I forgot. Google Talk notably supported tons of mobile platforms and was XMPP based and had federation, before they started down their path of reinventing messaging over and over.

Sure they created a lot of apps but they never replicated THE key feature of iMessage which is seamless SMS fallback within the same app. You don't have to even think about "Oh this person doesn't use such and such app"

Allo came the closest but messages sent to phone numbers not on Allo were sent through some proxy number so the recipient ended up getting the message as from some random google phone number.

RCS is the closest Google has ever come to the effortlessness of iMessage in terms of having a single app you can message anyone with, and incidentally there are some benefits if the other person is using a compatible app but regardless the message will get through (and from your number) one way or another.

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

#150

Post by maratc » Fri, Nov 15, 2019, 8:08 AM UTC

etaioinshrdlu wrote: post #138

iamaelephant wrote: post #52

This is very exciting for the 8 people still using SMS I suppose.

I'm a 20 something in tech circles in the West Coast of the US and I use SMS at least some of the time to communicate with: * Brother * Mother * Father * Uncle 1 * Uncle 2 * Roommate 1 * Roommate 2 * Friend of roommate * Cousin * Business partner All of that is in just the last week. SMS is the first messaging system softened mentioned when meeting new people. Because it's a lowest common demoninator. Why am I not co…

The reason you don't use WhatsApp is that the people you communicate with don't use WhatsApp. The reason they don't use WhatsApp is that the people they communicate with (this includes you) don't use WhatsApp.

This is called "network effect", where the value of the product for you is amplified as more and more other people use the same product. You can get a value out of a microwave oven, even if no other people ever use it; you can't get a value out of WhatsApp if other people don't use it, since there's not much value in WhatsApp-ing yourself.

The question, then, becomes: Why the US doesn't get value out of WhatsApp?, and this has to do with history.

As people started to use messaging (only SMS existed at that point) instead of calling, the US carriers responded by increasing the basic subscription price while including unlimited messaging (SMS). The relatively rich US population could bear this added cost. This, however, was not the situation in pretty much the rest of the world, where the SMS was either an expensive "added value service" (not good for the customer), or "unlimited within provider" (again, not good for the customer who has to guess whether their SMS is going to be free or not).

As of 2010, when WhatsApp started gaining popularity, its value in the US was questionable, since no-additional-price unlimited SMS was a viable alternative (as it still is). The rest of the world have seen a tremendous value in unlimited and free alternative to the expensive SMS. (WhatsApp pricing was $0 for unlimited messaging in the first year, and $1 per year after that.) With that value, the rest of the world switched swiftly. Not all of them went to WhatsApp, as Viber seems to be the most popular in Eastern Europe and LINE in Japan.