The arrival of iOS 18 in September brought many new capabilities, but from a texting standpoint, the biggest addition may have been support for RCS messaging. Once updated to the new iPhone software, your Apple phone can send high-quality pictures and videos, show typing indicators and include read receipts among other previously unavailable features for iPhone-to-Android texting.
However, it's not a perfect connection. This week, Samsung put out a press release (spotted by Android Authority) that explains how the Korean company worked with Google to "drive the adoption" of RCS enhanced messaging. And if you look past the marketing speak, you'll get an interesting look at how the two companies worked to make RCS a universal standard and what RCS does.
That same post also highlights something we already knew about iPhone to Android connections — they're not as secure as Android to Android texting
"All members of a chat must have RCS enabled. Requires Google Messages for Android users and iOS 18 or later for iPhone users," Samsung's post reads. "Encryption is only available for Android-to-Android communication."
A Pixel 9 to Galaxy S24 RCS chat will get encryption, for example, but chatting with an iPhone owner loses that bit of security. Similarly, when an iPhone user messages with another iPhone it uses iMessage, which is encrypted.
For a more detailed explanation on why encryption is important, check out our guide on what end-to-end encryption entails.
Google has been pushing RCS for a few years, and its version of is built on top of the RCS Universal Profile, which does not include end-to-end encryption. However, Google does implement encryption on Google Messages.
GSMA, the organization that manages RCS, announced in September that it's working on bringing end-to-end encryption to the Universal Profile. There's no timeline for when that would actually release though. That announcement does note the lack of encryption between IOS and Android.
At the end of the day, this is no different than how messages between Android and iOS were sending previously, as those weren't encrypted either. If you are looking for a more secure chat option, take a look at some of the best encrypted messaging apps.
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