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

Same here. Worked fine until yesterday in our group chat and now ‘Text Message - RCS’ went to ‘iMessage’ except if the Android user sends something then it allowed RCS for about two - three texts and went right back to iMessage. We all show RCS on our phones and carriers and have done the rests, turn off/on, etc…..suggestions. Hopefully there is a fix soon.

Thedevilsbait wrote:

In the US RCS works on all Android phones made this decade, even prepaid budget android phones that are under $100 on Amazon. Any android phone running Android 5 or later is capable of RCS messaging according to the Android documentation. The small number of people who may lack access to RCS on their android are restricted by their carrier not the phone, but all major US carriers support RCS now. Some smaller cell carriers were slow to adopt it at first but at this point I cant find anything online regarding a carrier that still doesn't support it .

You are missing the fact that NO version of Android supports RCS natively. You need an RCS compatible add-on messaging app such as Google Messages or Samsung Messages.

I have KT (South Korean cell service and states it supports RCS). I’ve restarted my phone and restarted network settings and still no luck. Could say it’s expected since IOS18 just rolled out but something tells me apple may be a little salty about this. Hopefully it patches up in 18.1 I would really love to add my dad to the family group chat 🥲

I have an iPhone 12 and it was working but as of today (9/23/24) it’s stopped . I’ve rebooted my phone and I’ve turned it off and then back on. Little earlier the text rcs was flickering between rcs and sms in the section you text in.

iOS 18 update here too on an iPhone 15 pro max only 2 contacts that have android show RCS in text. The rest show “Text Message•SMS”. Very frustrating. I have tried switching to airplane mode and turning the RCS on and off and restarting the phone, I’ve tried doing it out of airplane mode. Everyone I know has the same model android (Samsung S22) and we are all on Verizon Wireless which is supposedly compatible. It’s very frustrating and annoying. This was the one update I was waiting for and it doesn’t work

-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..

So my RCS messages work between my wife's android and my iphone that is on cricket. I think both phone have to be on the same carrier. They do not work between my work phone that's on Verizon and my cricket phone.

I have. It has happened both on WiFi and on cellular. It has happened with people on my same ATT plan and people not. On 5G, 5GE, various signal strengths when I’m out and about.

When it changes to SMS, it’s with all contacts - not just one. So it has nothing to do with anyone’s location OR anyone’s phone except maybe mine, and I doubt even that because it has happened in multiple situations as I said above.

The only reason it's working so well for Android is because of Google's RCS servers. In the early days of RCS, you could RCS to another person on the same carrier, but you could not RCS to another carrier. I think carriers did that as some type of "vendor lock in." I think that all changed when Google made RCS their standard after Allo, Hangouts and all their previous chat clients failed.

im having a current issue my RCS keeps turning on and off randomly and I’m assuming that’s either apples end or the RCS service itself. I’ve constantly see it back and forth I’d send videos to my gf and she’d send me a video and it’s either high quality or distorted. Right now I’m having an issue of it not going to RCS but the setting is on it says SMS now and it’s not going back to RCS but my gf has RCS on and if even shows she sent a text in RCS I can see her type still too but I can’t get back to RCS this started being a problem today.

RCS was working fine on my iPhone 14 Pro. When I upgraded to the 16 Pro, RCS stopped working. The text field says “Text Message - RCS” but when I hit send it immediately says “Not Delivered” with a red symbol.

I’ve tried:

Rebooting my phone

Turning on and off RCS

Turning on and off iMessage and RCS

Resetting all network settings

Even after all of that, sending messages keeps failing over RCS. It’s not the recipient, as sending RCS to them worked fine on my iPhone 14 using iOS 18.

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??????

thatboyGBaker wrote:

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??????

You would find it enlightening to read the thread you just added to. There are 6 pages of comments that address possible reasons RCS may not be working reliably for your iPhone, 90% of them having nothing to do with your iPhone.

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.

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!!