What Is RCS And How Does It Change Green Text Bubble Chats?

iPhone users have long dreaded the Android green bubble — Apple's way of showing that a text was sent as an SMS or MMS message instead of iMessage. SMS messaging has been around since 1992, and these messages often lack the modern features available in iMessage, such as emote responses, typing indicators, and read receipts. Before 2019, Androids exclusively sent messages to iPhones using SMS or MMS. When this happens, content gets compressed, video and picture quality diminishes, and the text comes in a green bubble instead of a blue one. 

Today, Android uses a different format for its messages called Rich Communication Services, or RCS. RCS has allowed Android users to send high-quality photos and videos to each other and to experience the modern comforts of read receipts and typing indicators. It has been the standard for Android devices since 2019. Yet texts between Android phones and iPhones still weren't optimal until Apple's release of iOS 18 in 2024, which brought RCS support to iPhones. Here's how it's changed texting between iPhones and Androids.  

Historically, iPhone users have been limited to SMS and MMS when sending messages to non-iOS devices. SMS messages only contain text, while MMS is used when a text contains an image or other attachment. Thanks to iOS 18 and later, however, messages sent between Android and iPhone users now feature a wide range of modern features, such as high-resolution photos and videos, emote reactions, read receipts, and typing indicators. Finally, messages sent to RCS-supported devices, such as any device with Google Messages, won't be subject to blurry photos and downscaled videos. However, it is important to note that RCS media still undergoes some compression, so don't expect to send RAW photographs or 4K video. 

Apple plans to continuously update RCS support on iPhone, and end-to-end encryption is expected in future software updates. While texts from Android devices still appear in a green bubble on iPhones, Apple is clearly focused on making cross-platform texting more fluid, and RCS support is a step in the right direction.

Apple's support for RCS in iOS 18 addressed one of the most frustrating issues iPhone users have faced when communicating with Android devices: broken group chats. Until RCS support came to iPhones, group messages involving Android devices defaulted to SMS. As mentioned, the outdated messaging protocol often led to failed message delivery, missing media, and a generally clunky user experience. 

Thanks to RCS support on iPhone, these problems are largely a thing of the past. Now, group chats between iPhones and Android devices function properly, offering improved media quality, read receipts, and real-time typing indicators. All of these features were missing from the green bubble texts of yesterday. Prior to this update, searches like "why do group chats with Android suck" would return endless forum posts and tech articles lamenting the broken texting experience between Android and iOS devices. This pain point in the user experience was one of the main reasons Google publicly pressured Apple to adopt RCS, launching campaigns such as "Get the Message," which highlighted the messaging gap between iPhone and Android.

Now that Apple is finally on board with RCS support, the texting experience between iPhone and Android is less troublesome. Group chats are more reliable, photos and videos aren't compressed beyond viewing, and there are read receipts and typing indicators. While the texts from Androids still appear in a green bubble on iPhones, that green bubble doesn't mean what it once did anymore.