T-Mobile and Google are joining forces in 'first-of-its-kind' partnership to boost RCS adoption
In theory, the Rich Communication Services (RCS) standard is pretty amazing, aiming to replace your phone’s rudimentary SMS (short message service) experience and add a bunch of modern features into the equation with no need for you to download a third-party IM app like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, or Telegram.
T-Mobile was actually the nation’s first carrier to launch RCS all the way back in 2015 (for a small fraction of its users), working tirelessly and closely with Android device makers since then to “drive adoption of those” enhanced messaging experience features and build them directly into its phones. That’s now true for almost 40 T-Mobile and Metro by T-Mobile smartphone models, with more obviously coming soon.
Sadly, we haven’t been able to find the full list containing all those 40 models, but most recently released Androids should be supported. To highlight the already impressive RCS adoption, T-Mo claims its customers send more than 700 million such “advanced” messages a day. The number is obviously likely to grow now that you can send RCS messages to Android customers on other networks around the world using your phone’s native messaging app.