On December 3, 1992, the world’s first SMS message was successfully sent, and now it has passed 30 years. At this critical point, Google once again issued a document praising the RCS SMS standard, and criticized Apple for not adopting the standard for a long time.

RCS stands for Rich Communication Suite – Rich Media Communication Standard, which is part of the Advanced Messaging Standard. It was initiated by the GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) association with the goal of replacing the current SMS messaging standard.

At present, RCS has won the support of the world’s mainstream mobile network operators (including the three major domestic operators), more than 500 Android device manufacturers (Xiaomi, HTC, Sony, LG, Huawei, OPPO, Samsung and ZTE, etc.).

In a blog post, Google Group Product Manager Neena Budhiraja listed three major benefits of the RCS standard over SMS:

• RCS supports end-to-end encryption, which has been extended to group chats, while SMS does not.
• RCS is more feature-rich. In addition to text messages, RCS also supports high-quality picture messages up to 10MB by default, group chats, location sharing, and even video calls. In addition, the RCS service supports complex functions such as read receipts (read function) and typing indicators (“the other party is typing” function), as well as texting via WiFi.
• Major mobile operators and device manufacturers in the market have adopted RCS as a standard, and no matter where the user is located or what model of mobile phone they use, their SMS experience is the same.

At present, Apple is the only “RCS standard opponent” among mainstream mobile phone manufacturers. When using iPhone to send messages to Android phones, Apple continues to rely on SMS. At the end of Google’s blog, it also called on Apple to adopt the RCS standard as soon as possible, and by the way mocked Apple’s “SMS technology stuck in the 1990s”, which is really “holding everyone back”.

In addition, Google also mentioned the “green and blue bubble” problem, whichDue to some differences in Apple’s iMessage instant messaging application: Apple users use blue text bubbles in iMessage by default, and because Apple has not adopted the RCS standard, the iPhone uses SMS for Andriod devices instead of sending messages over network data, so, Android users’ messages in iMessage will be displayed with green bubbles, and the “blue/green bubble” difference makes teenagers using Android phones suffer from discrimination in social activities-“Never date a green texter”.