Have you become bored with the SMS messaging? Well, the tech industry is aware of this fact and has come up with a solution for it. The solution for this problem is Rich Communications Services or RCS.

Even if one might be using Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp or even Apple’s iMessage where one is able to add pictures, videos, and GIFs to the messages; RCS is going to be somewhat different.

Knowing about RCS

It is a new protocol that was selected for approval by the GSM Association in 2008. It is meant to take the place of present texting standard SMS that has been around since the 1990s. The GMSA portrays a wide array of organization in the mobile industry, which includes device as well as software companies, internet companies, and others.

Hence, it took a bit of time to reach an agreement. Hence, till 2016, it wasn’t able to come up with a standard, known as the Universal Profile. According to GMSA, it’s a single industry-agreed set of features and technical enablers.

RCS Much Better Than SMS

RCS can add a lot of multimedia facility to the messaging. Apart from the usual texts, sending GIFs would become very easy. Same goes for the photos, videos of high-resolution. Moreover, users will be able to know if the person whom they want to send the image or message is available or not. Receipt would be send to the sender to prove the message being delivered.

RCS would facilitate improved group messaging. In short, standard messaging might look like iMessage.

While Google is going to get rid of its Allo app; however, it has introduced an RCS-empowered messaging service, which is being called Chat. Chat is available on Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL phones which run on Verizon network. Apart from Google, T-Mobile included Universal Profile version 1.0 of RCS for Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge phones. Even Sprint proclaimed the launch of RCS with Universal Profile to its devices.

Support for RCS is available to few carriers and devices. Hence, people won’t be able to take much advantage of it now.