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

lkrupp wrote:

And of course Apple will NEVER use Google’s servers.

Probably because it would be illegal for Apple to do so.

amp68 wrote:

They'd just need to ask Google for permission. Google might say yes.

And both companies would then be sued by the EU and the US FTC for monopolistic practices. Great idea.

I think it's malicious compliance on Apple's part. They're following the RCS spec to the letter. And I don't think the spec says to fall back to SMS and resend if RCS fails.

If you go into the settings and reset the network settings under General, it will fix the RCS issue. I had the same issue and that fixed it for me

I have it on my phone. It's still in RCS. It's going to take some time to see whether there is a fix in there though. I can go a few days with it working before it switches back to SMS.

This worked for me, thank you for the idea!

The carrier you have may make a difference, but I have iPhone 11 with T-Mobile and am on iOS 18. My messages with android users kept switching between SMS/RCS and I couldn’t figure out why. I did one of the steps someone else suggested which was to tap on the carrier option in the settings to change it to say SMS RCS but I don’t think that does anything because I restarted my phone and it went back to say T-Mobile until I tapped it again. I think it’s just for informational purposes. The fix is to go into messages and turn off “send as text message” and then be sure to turn on RCS. This will eliminate the switching and will now only send messages as RCS to android users. The only issue I can see happening with this is being turned off means when iMessage is not available to send to another iPhone, the message will not automatically be sent as SMS and will delay your message to be sent until iMessage is available again. Unless you go back to the settings and temporarily turn “send as text message” back on. See attached images. I hope this helps.

It is happening to me as well. I am using an iPhone 13 Pro Max on T-Mobile. As soon as I have updated to iOS 18 the RCS toggle is on but I am only allowed to send SMS messages to Android devices. The culprit for this issue is under carrier in thee settings, it is not showing that RCS messages are allowed.

The solutions of restarting my device has not fixed it. I may try to do a reset of network settings but before I did that I contacted T-Mobile to see if there is another solution. So far they were not helpful at all and the customer care rep was not knowledgeable about RCS. it is possibly the time of day I called.

I'm short, Incould be a sim issue or it is a bug on the software.

KaeBFly wrote:

Works fine on my iPhone 15 Pro Max on both the Verizon line and T-Mobile line. You may need to contact Verizon to make sure there isn’t a provision on their end that needs to be enabled or if you have to have specific plans (sometimes older grandfathered plans may be excluded from some features).

Good to know. I just verified this on my phone. Given that the link VP provided (and I read) about RCS only being available on Samsung phones, I wonder if the part about carrier interoperability is also wrong.

Not working on tracfone/straight talk yet. I received a carrier settings update yesterday which enabled the new RCS setting under settings>apps>messages, however going into settings>general>about>IMS Status shows Voice & SMS. I’ve restarted, turned off the line, turned off/on RCS. Nothing helps, I suppose it’s just a waiting game until someone flips the switch on it.

iPhone 14 pro Max on Verizon (work phone). My settings show only voice and SMS (my personal Pixel 9 Pro is also Verizon and I have RCS working no problem), however, in a test text between my Pixel and iPhone, I did notice that the reaction from the Android showed on the message itself (not "👍 to message") on the iPhone, so that's a step in the right direction.

I been having and issue we’re my friends android doesn’t support rcs and take forever for my phone to convert to sms while if there’s a group chat with more than one iPhone with iOS 18 with rcs turned on one one of the iPhone received the message it won’t convert to sms at all

But when you click on the carrier and click to change it to show RCS messaging etc, once you leave the settings app, it automatically goes right back to saying “Verizon”. At least on my phone is does. I have the iPhone 15 Pro Max.

my husband and I both have Verizon and he has some brand new android and it won’t work when I text him, it just sends as SMS. Yet when I text my mom’s android phone who isn’t through Verizon, it shows RCS as working. Super odd.

I was android and had rcs and was able to use the send later option to anyone. Now I have IPhone and with RCS, only some of my contacts have the option to send later not can I use send later within to a group chat as I was able to with android.