iOS 18 comes with bad news for users.
Updated on 18 September with the GSMA’s announcement on the future of RCS.
As hundreds of millions of iPhone users update their devices to iOS 18, coloring their home screens and navigating their new Photos app, the reality is that this update is more about what’s missing than what’s released. No Apple Intelligence—at least not yet, and another omission that has also been confirmed.
This bad news affects RCS—the biggest non-AI update coming with iOS 18, which brings rich messaging features to the iPhone messaging stock on Android for the first time, but which The Washington Post warns, it still leaves “conversations with Android friends [with] security and other compromises that Apple could have avoided.”
There’s still a lot of excitement as the shiny new SMS texting update v2 rolls out. “We’ve known it was coming for almost a year, but today is the day we’ve been waiting for.” Android Police he says. “The state of texting between the default messaging apps for Android and iPhone is getting a huge upgrade… Now that Apple has made iOS 18 official, iPhones can finally use the protocol intended to replace SMS and MMS.”
But those pesky green bubbles persist. this is not a magic bullet. “The drama has been going on for so long” Gizmodo says, “that we need to recognize the little things that add up to a better messaging experience.” This includes typing ellipses, reading proofs, sharing non-blurry images. But with growing pains, this often seems to depend on the generation of Android phones being texted, network conditions, and the seamless cross-platform experience we expect from other apps.
But the more serious issue is hidden from view. “In some important ways,” The Post says, “Apple’s messaging app remains stuck in the mobile phone age, which undermines the security of everyone’s messages.” While Gizmodo says: “We have to recognize that iOS users will have a different experience messaging their iPhone friends than those on Android. The version of RCS that Apple uses is not encrypted, unlike iMessage.”
So was this inevitable and unsolvable? No — not in any conceivable way. “Apple largely blames limitations on technology that combines iPhone and Android messaging apps.” The Post he says. “This is an incomplete explanation. Apple’s options also make conversations with Android devices worse.”
What this means – as I’ve explained before – is that Apple and Google could have collaborated on a secure API between their messengers to fully secure content, better compete with Signal, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger or Send messages in their own walled gardens. Or Apple could have delivered an Android iMessage app.
Conversely, this doesn’t really compete with the cross-platform security of these premium messaging platforms. And that’s above and beyond some of the other boring compromises that come with SMS V2 beyond a dedicated cross-platform app.
While RCS has been rolled out by Google’s managed push across the Android ecosystem, it did so with a dedicated client that adds a fully encrypted layer along with other updates. RCS itself does not include full security, and it is this limited protocol that Apple has adopted for the iOS 18 update. Apple has said that it will work with mobile industry standards-setters to push for an improved protocol. But that’s not coming anytime soon. And until then these compromises remain.
The net result is that Apple’s iMessage update gives users in Europe or Asia or Africa – where the likes of WhatsApp, Viber, Telegram and others dominate – no reason to switch, and in the US, where WhatsApp is crying foul, this just supports Meta’s relentless year-round privacy campaign.
What makes it even more interesting is Telegram and the recent travails of its founder and frontman Pavel Durov. The issue with Telegram has always been the gap between its marketing and reality. Messenger plays the security card but doesn’t fully encrypt its messages either, just like RCS. Telegram’s real game has always been its rogue refusal to cooperate with the authorities—until now, one assumesand its privacy—better facilitating anonymity for users.
Durov’s arrest has left many of Telegram’s nearly billion users wondering who will now have access to messages sitting on Telegram’s servers, protected by nothing more than the platform’s own encryption (to which it holds the keys) and its voluntary policies.
There are other compromises with the new RCS connection between iPhone and Android—not surprising, given that the connection relies on a cellular protocol versus more proprietary cross-platform integration. If Google and Apple had intended to deliver a less boring, more secure messaging experience between Android and iPhone, none of these issues or compromises would be plaguing millions of users now.
While the initial live RCS is disappointing with these glaring omissions, there is some good news — maybe. The mobile standards setter, the GSMA, has published a blog on the Tuesday after iOS 18 is released.
“Today, we’re celebrating a major milestone in the evolution of messaging with the launch of Rich Communication Services (RCS) support on the iPhone,” said GSMA Chief Technical Officer Tom Van Pelt. “It’s a step forward in bringing RCS’ feature-rich messaging to more users on both iOS and Android.”
And while Van Pelt called out the current feature updates, “like typing indicators, read receipts, high-quality media sharing, and improved group messaging,” the real point of the post was much more important.
“The next major milestone is for the RCS Universal Profile to add important user protections such as end-to-end cross-functional encryption,” he announced. “This will be the first development of standardized, interoperable message encryption between different computing platforms, addressing significant technical challenges such as key federation and cryptographically enforced group membership.”
Given Apple’s focus on security and privacy, it was surprising to see Google beef it up first, before Apple, but then RCS on the iPhone always seemed more important to Google than Apple. Users have long been left with the feeling that Apple would not have made this move if it could have been avoided. That’s why it was such a surprising turn when it was first announced last year. I’ve reached out to Apple for any comments they have on the GSMA news in light of the iOS 18 release.
“We’re proud to offer end-to-end encryption (E2EE) in Google Messages with RCS starting in 2020,” posted Elmar Weber, head of Android and Business Communications. LinkedIn. “We believe E2EE is a critical component of secure messaging and are working with the wider ecosystem to bring E2EE cross-platform to RCS conversations as soon as possible. Google is committed to providing a secure and private messaging experience for users, and we remain committed to establishing an E2EE standard for all RCS users regardless of platform.”
The real question is why do this as an update to the standard RCS protocol instead of a simpler and more efficient API between Google Messages (the stock Android messenger) and iMessage (the stock iPhone messenger), which would be technically easier and more powerful, and would also provide a better sense of end-to-end security. Beyond these two platforms, the feature-rich RCS is becoming less interesting now, especially in light of Samsung’s decision to switch to the Android standard.
The other question is how long this will take and when users can expect an update that essentially just brings RCS closer to where the other platforms are today. That’s unlikely to happen anytime soon — and until then, challenges remain.
“Even if messaging apps follow the RCS standard,” Samsung pointed out, explaining why it is abandoning its own platform in favor of Google, “availability may be limited depending on the app the other party uses. That’s why we decided to make Google Messages the common messaging platform, allowing Galaxy users to communicate more freely. This also allows a messaging application to respond to RCS standard changes more quickly and efficiently.”
All the up-to-date, fully encrypted, more seamless platforms—Signal and WhatsApp would be my picks—have none of these problems, though be aware of the metadata shared if you use WhatsApp. But I don’t see any reason to switch their daily messenger to iMessage or Google Messages. It’s just not worth the compromises or risks.
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