Google has been pushing RCS as the replacement for good old text messages, but it doesn’t look like Apple has any intention to move its iMessage user base out of its walled garden. Apple seems to acknowledge that group chats between Apple and Android users are a bad experience for everyone involved, though, as the company’s new iOS 17 beta is adding some key enhancements.
During its annual developer conference, Apple highlighted a few additions to its upcoming iOS update, including features coming to iMessage. What the company didn’t talk about were the improvements it made for iMessage chats with Android users, but that didn’t stop XDA from spotting them in the beta release.
In green bubble group chats on iMessage, iPhone users can now edit texts, reply in threads, and send iMessage-quality videos. However, the big caveat is that these improvements are limited to Apple users. This means that while the experience is getting better among friend groups where the majority owns iPhones, Android users will still feel left out when they can’t see edited messages or understand which messages others reply to. It’s also a shame that videos and media won’t be sent in the same high quality — they're compressed heavily to fit through the ancient MMS pipeline. It also remains to be seen if any of the improvements Apple has added will affect Google Messages' ability to work with some iMessage features, like emoji reactions.
As much as it’s a bummer that Android users can’t directly benefit from these enhancements, iOS 17 might just offer a small remedy for the green bubble stigma. iPhone users will be able to retain a bigger set of familiar features, making the gap between blue and green bubbles appear just a little less jarring. In the meantime, the feud between Apple and Google over iMessage is far from over. We can only hope that someday, RCS can replace SMS once and for all and for everyone.