Can Google finally get the message?
Android messaging is making a determined bid to catch up with its rivals
MESSAGING on Android is an absolute shambles. It’s the weakest part of Google’s mobile platform.
But this week plans were revealed that will hopefully see that change. Say hello to Android Chat. Is that a new app, you say? No, says Google, it’s a new feature that brings something called RCS – Rich Communication Services – to Android.
Or rather, it brings a standardised version of RCS to Android – RCS itself has been around for years, but has been implemented differently by different mobile carriers. That’s the problem Google’s initiative hopes to solve.
The hope has always been that RCS would replace the traditional system for text messaging – SMS – because it allows users to send longer messages, full resolution video and photos, get read receipts, and even see typing indicators.
If you use an iPhone you might wonder what all the fuss is about, because Apple’s Messages app has been doing all that stuff for years with iMessages, which isn’t based on the RCS standard, but is built on Apple’s own technology.
You may also know that on iPhone, if you send a message to someone who doesn’t have an iPhone, the system falls back on SMS and just sends the other person a standard SMS message (you’ll see iMessages are blue, while SMS messages are green in the iOS Messages app).
Google has had a few cracks at tackling this issue, which has seen them lag behind not just Apple, but Facebook with its Messenger and WhatsApp apps.
Not that Google hasn’t been trying – it has made numerous attempts at building a chat app that people actually want to use.
Remember Hangouts, for example (a name which, confusingly, has now been repurposed for business chat in Google’s G Suite)?
Currently there are a couple of Google-made messaging options on Android – an app called Allo and another called Android Messages.
Messages is the OS’s default app for messaging, and so most people use it. That is where all the users are.
Allo is an instant messaging app Google released a couple of years ago in the hope of producing a rival to Apple’s Messages and Facebook Messenger.
It’s good, but it didn’t take off because it only worked if both the messenger and messagee had the app.
And this is the problem Chat hopes to solve, and also why Google says it’s “pausing” development of Allo and moving all its messaging resources into Android Messenger and the Chat feature.
So, soon you’ll see Android Messages updated to support Chat – but there’s a catch or two.
The feature is a carrier feature, not a Google feature – so you’ll only be able to use it if your carrier supports it. Some of them do, some of them don’t – Google is hoping most will switch on support for it this year.
That’s not the way iOS iMessages work – that’s a feature implemented by Apple using Apple’s own servers.
And there’s another catch – Google Chat messages are not encrypted like iMessages are (Apple could not read them, or reveal them to anyone else, even if they wanted to).
For a simple system that just works (at last) on Android, that might be a price worth paying. It’s been too long already.