RCS, which is the spiritual successor to SMS, is increasingly being supported by various carriers and mobile phone brands around the world. However, its rollout was not as seamless as it should've been, which forced Google to release the RCS feature to all Android smartphones via its own Google Messages app. The app lacked an important security feature, though, and Google has now fixed it.
The Google Messages app now features end-to-end encryption in one-to-one chats on all supported Android smartphones. Hiroshi Lockheimer, Senior Vice President at Google, announced the arrival of this important security feature via a tweet. With this feature enabled by default, RCS chats will now be more secure, and the messages can't be intercepted by anyone (even by Google) while they're in transit.
The end-to-end encryption feature, which was earlier in beta, is now available via the stable channel for everyone. It is still not active for group chats, though, and we hope that Google releases it soon. To see if the encryption feature is active on your Galaxy smartphone, just start an RCS chat thread and look for a lock icon.
RCS, which debuted four years ago, supports sending and receiving text, high-resolution images, high-resolution videos, emojis, stickers, group chat, file sharing, audio messages, location sharing, multi-device support, and more. The Samsung Messages app also features RCS compatibility, but the feature is not available on every carrier, which makes it difficult to use.
