Credit: Ryan Haines / Android Authority
- Wear OS smartwatches cannot send RCS messages independent of a phone connection.
- A future update to Google Messages could enable standalone RCS on Wear OS smartwatches, letting you send and receive RCS messages on your smartwatch even without your phone.
- This will allow RCS to behave similarly to how WhatsApp currently works on Wear OS smartwatches.
RCS is back in the limelight these days, thanks to Apple’s rollout of iOS 18, which enabled iPhone users to send and receive RCS messages. Android users have been able to send RCS messages through their phones for a while now thanks to Google’s efforts with Google Messages, but you can’t say the same for Wear OS smartwatches. If you leave your phone behind, you won’t be able to send any messages to other users through your smartwatch. This could soon change as Google is working on bringing standalone RCS capabilities to Wear OS smartwatches through a Google Messages app update.
Google Messages v20240926 beta has added some flags that indicate standalone RCS is coming to Wear OS smartwatches.