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

See this Apple support document that lists the carriers that support RCS.

Wireless carrier support and features for iPhone in the United States and Canada - Apple Support

And this link to a 9to5Mac article about RCS

https://9to5mac.com/2024/09/16/heres-how-to-check-if-your-carrier-already-supports-rcs-on-iphone/

Your Android friend’s carrier must also support RCS as well as the Android phone itself.

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.

Allen wrote:

I have Verizon. RCS reports on in settings. So I tried everyone in my contacts list to send a text. All the iPhone users, it said "iMessage." Almost all Android users it said "SMS." BUT I did find two contacts where it said "RCS" so Verizon must not support it for all Android users.

What carriers do the people have who you're seeing SMS? And what carrier do the two contacts have where it does say RCS?

The article linked to earlier (which was wrong about some things) says that there is no carrier interoperability. But I don't trust it.

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.

This is misleading. Many carriers support RCS that are not supported on iOS 18. Perhaps the carrier has more to do before the updated "bundle" can be submitted to Apple, and maybe Apple just hasn't updated with the bundle yet.

I will say that this was working for me fine yesterday and not at all today. I’m on t-mobile with an iPhone 14PM updated to iOS 18 and I have a friend also on t-mobile with a Samsung Fold 6, using Google Messages with RCS on. When I sent her messages yesterday, they went through RCS. I could see the typing indicator. I sent a nice video that wasn’t all garbled. I even sent a tapback and it worked. At the bottom of my messenger in the area where I type, it said “Text Message - RCS”. Today it wasn’t working and it said “Text Message - SMS”. When she tried to send something to me, it said that I was offline and it wouldn’t send until I was back online (paraphrasing). She sent it SMS and it went through immediately. I checked my phone and RCS is turned on. Seems like something on Apple’s end.

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.

The RCS chat option was turned off on my wife's phone. After I enabled the option on her device, it now works perfectly. It may take a while for the issues to be resolved, but I’m so glad it’s here.

[Edited by Moderator]

amp68 wrote:

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.

Indeed:

• Skype
• Signal
• Microsoft Meet
• WhatsApp
• Facebook Messenger
• Google Chat
• Google Meet
• Zoom for real time
• Groups.io (for larger groups; free up to 100, $220/year for unlimited size groups)

As in my comment above, that was the first thing I did. AT&T has the technology. My entire household of 5 is on the same cell account. I’m the only iPhone, there are 3 different Samsungs and one Google phone. RCS is on and off with each of them intermittently and not all at the same time. Sometimes we’re in the same b house when it happens (so same tower, same WiFi, etc). Definitely NOT a carrier issue in my case at least.

RCS is back on my phone. It comes and goes. When it turns on, it will stay on for a few days and then it goes back to SMS. For me, it has nothing to do with whether the recipients have RCS on their phones (though they do), it has to do with my phone. If I go to General > About and tap on ESIM > Carrier, I see "Voice, SMS & RCS" when RCS is working on my phone and "Voice & SMS" when it isn't.

I'm not sure whether T-Mobile or Apple is to blame for this. This entire thread has been a mishmash of different issues. In my case, it has nothing to do with whether someone else has RCS set up. It's all on either the carrier or Apple.

" I also wish that they would have waited to implement it until it was stable."

Who’s they? It’s certainly not Apple as most are not having this issue. I’m certainly not and text my Android friends using RCS without issues. Apple has implemented RCS to comply with the RCS standard, not Google’s customized version. Remember that it takes 3 to tango with RCS: your iPhone, your cellular carrier, and the Android user you are texting.

I wish I knew who "they" was. I don't understand how this is supposed to work.

I have T-Mobile. I have an iPhone 14PM. I have never gotten clear indication on where the fault lies for this.

I know that this has nothing to do with the recipient because my actual device keeps switching back to SMS based on Settings > About. When I tap on the ESIM Carrier, it shows Voice, SMS & RCS when RCS is available and Voice & SMS when it's not.

I just discovered that if I shut off my line and turn it back on, RCS does come back.

It's actually pretty simple. Your phone can only send a message, SMS or RCS through the carrier and if RCS is at times missing, it means your carrier doesn't have RCS available at the time you want to send the message. RCS is NOT an Apple Service. But it is a new service through iPhone, which the carriers have to implement on their end AND make stable on their end.

I honestly don't get why it matters that much? Whether a message is sent via SMS or RCS, as long as the message is delivered, seems most important to me. Maybe you can help me understand from your point of view, why it matters so much?

As others noted, there are significant advantages to sending RCS vs SMS especially if you send images or videos to Android users.

But I think your comment is overly simplistic as to the problems people are experiencing on this thread. Some people are having issues with their carrier support of RCS. But other people are having problems that might be issues with Apple’s implementation. For instance, when I upgraded to a new phone, RCS threads from my old device broke while new RCS threads worked. I suspect that was an issue with how Apple migrated older RCS threads to a new device.

In any event, RCS can’t work if Apple doesn’t implement it well on its own devices. So you can’t definitively say it’s a carrier issue. It might be a carrier issue in many cases (or even most cases), but RCS is a complex service that requires the entire stack to work together.