TEXTING BETWEEN ANDROID and iPhones isn’t always the smoothest experience. Photos and videos get pixelated, messages from Android users show up as the dreaded green chat bubble on iPhone, and then there are emoji reactions. When an iPhone user hits the thumbs-up or heart reaction emoji, that doesn’t translate to Android, and it shows up as an awkward text description of the emoji instead.
Google has been trying to fix some of that, though it faces the never-ending challenge of buy-in from Apple. This week, Google said that updates coming to Messages will allow Android users to respond to iPhone texts with emojis. Other updates include the ability to thread responses to individual messages, embed YouTube videos directly in messages, and get automatic transcriptions of voice messages on certain phones. It’s a concerted effort by Google to make messaging on Android more appealing and put pressure on Apple to meet it halfway.
The technical point of contention here has been Rich Communications Services, a messaging standard that Google has been pushing its partners to adopt over the past year. RCS handles attachments and media better than the SMS standard that has been the norm in messaging for decades. Thing is, Apple has its own messaging standard between iPhones and other Apple devices, and then defaults to SMS when an iPhone user and Android user are exchanging messages. And Apple expressed exactly zero interest in switching to RCS. So a lot of messages get lost in translation between the platforms.
Last month, Google made a public plea for Apple to switch its standards so iOS messages would play nice with Android devices. But after Apple CEO Tim Cook’s withering dismissal of the idea, the stalemate between the tech giants continues. At least Android users—or those considering the switch—are getting slightly better messages with this latest update.
