What Does RCS Stand For? Here's What The Messaging Format Means
The era of SMS and buggy MMS is coming to an end, and the torchbearer for mobile communication is going to be RCS. Championed by the likes of Google as a leveler for digital conversations, RCS — which stands for Rich Communications Services — is already mainstream on Android phones and has also found acceptance by Apple after years of struggle. Technically, RCS is an interactive messaging protocol that is an upgrade to the industry standard that was once SMS and MMS, especially in terms of features available to users. But there is a lot more to RCS than just sprinkling fancy tricks like GIFs and send receipts.
It also adds a layer of security that makes your messages nearly impervious to snooping and interception. That secret sauce is end-to-end encryption, the same trick that WhatsApp and Signal use to market the privacy of those respective platforms, and which Telegram continues to advertise with some glaring caveats.
As soon as the message leaves your phone, it is jumbled up using a technique broadly referred to as cryptography. If a hacker — or even the platform itself — somehow manages to intercept the message mid-way through its transmission, they won't be able to make sense of it. Only when it reaches the recipient's phone that the message is decoded back into its original form.
What RCS has to offer?
On a functional level, think of RCS as a generation-over-generation leap that brings snazzy features from apps like WhatsApp, Telegram, and iMessage to the standard messaging apps pre-installed on your smartphone. But the biggest difference would be the mode of transmission. RCS is IP-based, which means it relies on mobile data or Wi-Fi connectivity to send and receive messages, just like WhatsApp and Telegram. One of the biggest upgrades of RCS communication is that it finally allows high-resolution photo and video sharing, limiting the conventional cellular data packet limitation that one encountered with the MMS protocol. Multimedia file sharing should be just as seamless as any internet-driven messaging application.
There are a few more perks that come with RCS protocol, adding features users have had for years on platforms like iMessage and WhatsApp. Some of those notable conveniences of RCS while using the Google Messages app include indicators to show when the person on the other end is composing their message, read receipts, message reactions using emojis, sharing photomojis or animated emojis, screen effects for messages, and more. Users can also handle group conversations, just like they would on WhatsApp. However, do keep in mind that RCS won't hinder your messages if there's no cellular internet or Wi-Fi connectivity. For such scenarios, the Messages app automatically defaults to SMS or MMS for communication, with all their restrictions in tow and the standard charges applied by your carrier.