Learn how one important change in iOS 18 will send your iMessaging experience on an revolutionizing path on your iPhone, this time facilitating communication with Android devices using the RCS technology.
But then a day later, my phone rings — a breaking news push notification signaling Apple has begun to support RCS messaging natively in iOS 18.
As part of the iOS 18 release, Apple fully leans into RCS (Rich Communication Services) messaging efforts — this time connecting iPhones to Android devices. This means you can look forward to a more elegant and fully featured messaging experience when chatting with your Android buddies.
This new RCS messaging will provide a ton of cool features such as typing indicators, read receipts, high quality image and video sharing — better than what standard SMS messaging is capable of doing. No more worrying about the image quality when txting across platforms, no frustration of loosing important context on a text! And so enters iOS 18 which aims to deliver them rich and full-featured, with complete function parity, into the hands of anyone.
How to get RCS Messaging on your iPhone
For RCS messaging to work on your iPhone, which should be running iOS 18, you’ll also need a supported carrier. Thankfully, most major carriers have already started rolling out RCS on their networks including Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile so chances are you now have access to it regardless of the iPhone you carry.
This is how you can find out if your carrier supports RCS and enable it on your iPhone.
1. First, Open the Settings app on your iPhone then Click Cellular or Mobile Data.
2. Tap Carrier then that will change to IMS Status.
3. This landing page will show the messaging support contact information for your carrier. The second screenshot shows details about RCS, if the service is supported in your region.
If you do that, you can breathe a sigh of relief knowing your messages with Android users will look and feel better. You will stop receiving the green bubbles or dealing with those terrible image qualities and your interactions would spread as if you were among iPhone people.
Conclusion
RCS messaging coming with iOS 18 is a huge deal for iPhone users as it means an interoperable future and improved chat feature turned reality. With iPhone-to-Android cross-platform support, now users can take advantage of things like typing indicators, read receipts, and high-quality media sharing with friends and family who prefer (or are stuck) on an Android. RCS working with most of the big carriers means that Apple’s potential for improving iPhone messaging has never been higher.
