- An APK teardown of the Google Messages apps shows how Google will solve the low-quality media problem in RCS chats.
- When sending media, a pop-up will appear asking if you want to send it at “original quality” or “optimized for chat.”
- Hopefully, this comes very soon, as iPhone RCS support is right around the corner.
For years now, Google has been pushing Apple to “get the message” about rich communication services (RCS). Last year, out of nowhere, Apple finally announced it was getting on board. This will allow people who use RCS-supported apps on Android — chiefly Google Messages — to better and more securely communicate with people who use Apple’s Messages apps on iPhones. However, there’s just one problem: Google Messages still sends out heavily compressed media. Thankfully, that is changing — and not a moment too soon.
To be clear, we knew Google had been working on this since at least July. However, we now have seen evidence in the latest beta of Messages (messages.android_20240823_00_RC00.phone_samsung_openbeta_dynamic) to show just how this will work from a user perspective, and we can see that it’s essentially done. This heavily suggests we’ll see this roll out relatively soon, which is great news because Google only has one first impression to give iPhone users the first time they communicate with an Android user through RCS — and it doesn’t want to bungle that up.