Credit: Ryan Haines / Android Authority
- A press note from Samsung re-highlighted how encryption is available only for Android-to-Android RCS chats.
- Google Messages on Android supports end-to-end encryption through a custom implementation on top of RCS Universal Profile, which lacks the feature.
- Thus, RCS chats between Android and iPhone users are not end-to-end encrypted, which is a big shortcoming for privacy and security.
It was a long wait, but iPhone users finally jumped onto the RCS bandwagon with the release of iOS 18 in September this year. RCS allows iPhone users to seamlessly text Android users with high-quality media, text reactions, richer group chats, and more. But it’s not all sunshine and rainbows for RCS, as there remains a big caveat when Android users send an RCS message to iPhone users, which is the lack of encryption.
Samsung shared a press note on how it worked with Google to accelerate RCS adoption. The press note reiterates much of what we already know, but the fine print at the bottom of it caught our attention more than anything else.