In the wake of carrier delays and missteps, Google has decided it's taking the reins when it comes to the future of phone messaging and RCS. The Verge is reporting that Google will be spinning up its own RCS/Chat services later this month for users in the UK and France, with support coming to other areas "throughout the year," though there is no firm timeline or list of markets.
Read MoreT-Mobile expanding RCS Universal Profile to Samsung Galaxy Note8 and Note9
The way that smartphones send and receive messages is changing, and the name of the game is now RCS: Rich Communication Services. Little by little, manufacturers and carriers are getting their handsets ready for this next-gen protocol, so we're always interested in seeing when some new hardware comes on board. Last year T-Mobile brought compatibility to a number of Samsung devices, and it's continuing to do so now with RCS Universal Profile support coming to the Galaxy Note8 and Galaxy Note9.
Read More[Update: S8 Active, too] T-Mobile rolls out support for RCS Universal Profile to Galaxy S8 and S8+
Although T-Mobile has offered its own in-network implementation of RCS messaging since 2015, it wasn't until this summer that the carrier joined Sprint in deploying an inter-carrier solution — GSMA's Universal Profile 1.0. At the time of roll out, though, the magenta carrier only updated subscribers with the Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge. Now, it's expanding by pushing the update to the Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8+ along with October bug fixes.
Read More[Update: More details] RCS Universal Profile rolling out on T-Mobile, starting with the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge
Back in March, T-Mobile promised that it would deploy the Universal Profile for inter-carrier RCS compatibility by the end of Q2 of this year. Although magenta subscribers have had RCS for in-network communications since 2015, and other US carriers have their own proprietary implementations, Sprint was the only one to support it at this "universal" level, courtesy of Google's Jibe. Now, with just two days to spare on its original estimate, T-Mobile is rolling out support for RCS Universal Profile 1.0.
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