Why is RCS not working between my iPhone running iOS 18 and Android?

I am with T-Mobile. My wife has a Fold 6 with RCS enabled. I enabled RCS and it worked for a while. And then it stopped working. Per instructions in this thread, I reset my network and it started working again. And it worked fine for two days and stopped working again. General > About > IMS status did show Voice, SMS, and RCS and now it just shows Voice and SMS. I could reset the network again to get it back but that’s a pain in the *** workflow that shouldn’t be happening. It was working and then it stopped. Twice.

-Shane wrote:

I think ur right. I have Verizon & I think it’s a Verizon thing. I have a couple Android contacts that RCS works with, but RCS isn’t working with most of my Android contacts.

Your Android contacts need to have downloaded an RCS-capable messaging app..

I’m the only iPhone in my 5-person household. Updated to iOS 18 a few days ago. RCS worked great. Then it didn’t. Then it did. And so-on ever since the update. All 5 phones are on the same cellular network. Different brands (3 Samsung, 1 google). Point is, ATT supports it, their phones support it (because it works some of the time), and everything is activated (again proof is it works some of the time). When my message box changes to SMS, I do not receive their replies until my phone decides to flip back to RCS (it does this on its own randomly while,

for example, I’m in my house the whole time). Yesterday there was a 3-4 hour gap. I also did not receive their calls, or alerts of voice mail messages for several hours - I believe the voice mail alert finally showed up about 4 hours after the texts came through. Coincidentally (?), this morning my son received a very loud weather alert about 30 minutes before I did, and my phone had been on sms during that time.

I’ve restarted my phone multiple times. I’ve turned RCS off and back on a few times. I even went to the ATT store today and they are baffled.

Clearly there are bugs. I hope apple fixes them asap because meanwhile I’m fuming that my husband/kids aren’t replying to me, when all the while my phone is the issue. I have no way of knowing which scenario is correct (because they can’t call me, either, and I’m completely unaware.) Ask any mom of driving teenagers - it is not good when they can’t reach you if there’s an emergency.

I think the fact that this thread is 6 pages long speaks to the fact that RCS is far from a perfect solution.

Android users have far fewer problems with RCS because the Android Messages app uses Google's RCS server and Android communications is centralized in the way that iMessage is (assuming the carrier allows it). But Apple uses the carriers' RCS servers and not Google's.

My RCS experience has been mixed. Some contacts I can use RCS with. Some still do SMS, even on the same carrier. Some group chats are RCS. Some are SMS.

The biggest problem I have not is chats getting recreated. I have an RCS group chat going to with a bunch of coworkers. One coworkers posted a video and that video post made a new group chat for everyone, Android and iOS with all the same users in it, but with only the video. At one point, we had 3 different chats all created by people adding some kind of multimedia posts.

The next day, all the chats were consolidated down to one chat.

Other times, the chats will split on the Android side, but stay as one chat on the iOS side.

Some of my Android using friends claim it's because Apple isn't using the Universal Profile feature of RCS. I don't know enough about RCS to know how true that is.

But I do know that Apple needs to use each carriers individual RCS server.

I thought I was the only one having the same issue! But I have the iPhone 15 plus…..

I thought we were supposed to have the RCS feature?????? I really hope y’all get this fixed and very fast! If that’s the case, why even blab about the feature in the first place??????

As an update, I’ve determined that RCS is working for me with certain Android users.

Perhaps it is a coincidence, but it is working with people I had never used RCS with previously and failing with people I had used RCS with prior to upgrading to a new device.

Based on that, my suspicion is that RCS might use some kind of handshake between message recipients. Perhaps when I upgraded to a new phone the handshake data was not transferred and is not being reset. But when I message new people, a new handshake is created with them and there are no issues. That’s just my guess at this point.

I spent a while with Verizon tech support. They tried resetting a bunch of things on their end and escalated to further teams. Hopefully I’ll learn more in a few days.

Not Delivered appears to happen if the recipient’s phone is not on or doesn’t have a network connection. RCS apparently is not store and forward.

Jdubya08 wrote:

I am having the exact same issue with my iPhone 13 Pro on Verizon. I spent a few hours trying to trouble shoot it using all the different suggestions in this thread and it still give me the same “Not delivered” error instantly every time. So frustrating!!

Not Delivered appears to happen if the recipient’s phone is not on or doesn’t have a network connection. RCS apparently is not store and forward.

Zpk23 wrote:

I’ve only found 1 android user that the RCS texting works with. The weird part is, if I text their sister, who has the same carrier and same phone, it still goes through as sms. Would think RCS would work for both since everything is the same besides the actual phone number.

So you are finding out that RCS is not the White Knight in shining armor that it was hyped up to be by Google when it was pressuring Apple to support it.

lkrupp wrote:

So you are finding out that RCS is not the White Knight in shining armor that it was hyped up to be by Google when it was pressuring Apple to support it.

Or when the media hyped that rather absurd notion that people were being ostracized for having green bubbles...

Well, if you're on Android, I believe you default to Google's RCS servers (unless the carrier forces you to use theirs), which probably gives Android users a more unified experience.

iOS uses the carrier's RCS servers.

So, if Google wasn't running their own RCS servers, then Android would probably be in the same RCS **** we're in now.

I finally got my work group chat to move away from using SMS/MMS/RCS and now we're using Telegram. We're not looking for secure communication. We just want a group chat with hi-res images and videos and the ability to use rich text. Telegram fits the bill.

If you need to have a group chat with Android users, use ANYTHING ELSE. Don't like Telegram? There's a ton of other free chat clients out there.

amp68 wrote:

Well, if you're on Android, I believe you default to Google's RCS servers (unless the carrier forces you to use theirs), which probably gives Android users a more unified experience.

Various phone manufacturers also include their own messaging apps. Or, you use a third-party app. Which is one of the reasons the Android experience is so much less unified than the iPhone experiencing app.

iOS uses the carrier's RCS servers.

Yes, that's correct.

So, if Google wasn't running their own RCS servers, then Android would probably be in the same RCS **** we're in now.

Personally, I'm not in any sort of ******. I continue to have no issues messaging people who don't use iMessage.

I finally got my work group chat to move away from using SMS/MMS/RCS and now we're using Telegram. We're not looking for secure communication. We just want a group chat with hi-res images and videos and the ability to use rich text. Telegram fits the bill.

Whatever works for you.

If you need to have a group chat with Android users, use ANYTHING ELSE. Don't like Telegram? There's a ton of other free chat clients out there.

Again, I have no problems with SMS. I'm not interested in adding any third-party messaging services. Way too much hassle.

amp68 wrote:

This is such an American attitude for some reason. All over the world, people use something else. And it varies by region. In Europe and South America, most people use WhatsApp. In Asia, many people use WeChat. The world gave up on SMS when better alternatives came along.

It's an "American attitude" that I don't feel the need to make a change because I don't (nor do the people I correspond with) have a problem with SMS? Are you sure I'm American?

But here in the US, we're all still hung up on using the default messaging client that comes with our phones, even though it's a bad experience compared to alternatives.

I am not having a bad experience with Messages.

Now, iMessage provides a great experience. But SMS, when used with non iOS users, does not. And I hate this attitude both sides have where iPhone users tell Android users to get an iPhone, so group chats don't go green. And Android users always say the Apple users are the problem, because Apple didn't support RCS until last month.

I'm not telling anyone to do anything. I'm not sure where you're getting that. I don't have a problem. My Android-using friends don't have a problem. Perhaps it's because we're more interested in the content of the conversation than the color of the bubbles. But you should do what works best for you.

Well, guess what? This problem got solved by third parties over a decade ago by providing IP based rich messaging clients with a mobile and desktop client. But for some reason, we Americans just REFUSE to switch to anything else.

My lack of interest in switching has nothing to do with my nationality. It is I don't have a problem that would be solved by switching messaging apps. They would only cause me problems. I'd have to get other people to switch. I'd have to provide tech support to some of them.

I've been trying to get my work group chat switches anything else, and what finally did it was when Apple rolled out RCS support and our group chat kept going from RCS to SMS, and when someone sent a new video or image, it would create a new group chat. At one point, everyone had 3 group chats going that would occasionally merge back into one group chat, and then break apart into multiple group chats.

That sounds very annoying.

But the YEARS of pain we put up with because no one could bother to just install an app and create an account. Now we're all using Telegram and wondering why we didn't do this years ago.

I'm glad you found a solution that works for you and your co-workers.

amp68 wrote:

If you're just using iOS, most of what you do will work well. But if you have Text Message Forwarding enabled and try to send messages using Messages on MacOS, you'll get more failures than successful deliveries. For me, it's very frustrating.

Again, I've never had this problem. I regularly use Text Message Forwarding from my Mac and my iPad. I can't remember the last time it failed.

I think it might be wise to consider that generalizing from your own experience doesn't always lead to accurate or widely applicable conclusions.

EliORojas wrote:

I'm having the exact same issue. The first day it was available, the RCS messages allowed my husband and I to text, send photos, and videos seamlessly ( I have the Iphone 15 pro max and he has the S24 ultra). Yesterday, I was no longer able to message him, everytime I tried it would say it failed and I had to "resend as SMS" Super annoying and frustrating to have to go back after every single message even though I have the setting on for it to automatically send as SMS if RCS or imessage are not available.

As has been explained in the 8 pages of this thread over and over and over and over, RCS depends on the capabilities of your cellular carrier at each of their towers, and not all carriers have the hardware and software to support RCS deployed across their networks. So if it isn’t working contact your carrier and get them to fix it.

It works Android to Android because those phones use Google’s servers, as Android is a Google product. For fairly obvious legal antitrust reasons Apple cannot use Google’s servers, so they have to depend on carriers doing the job.

1st tier Verizon support was able to “restart text service”. It required me to shut off my phone so you can’t call on the line you need to restart. Also I am revolving texts from everyone now but my RCS is still not active. Verizon currently reports RCS outages (iPhone 16 launch broke their server I bet) all over and issued me a refund for the affected period of service outage.