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RCS has been a royal pain for me on Android, too. Partially my fault since I'm using non-default ROMs (LineageOS on my Fairphone 4, which I then replaced with

RCS has been a royal pain for me on Android, too. Partially my fault since I'm using non-default ROMs (LineageOS on my Fairphone 4, which I then replaced with GrapheneOS on my Pixel 9a), but also mostly Google's fault for taking as janky of an approach as possible when it comes to its Messages app (which seems to be the only actively-maintained Android SMS app with RCS support, because of course it is). The Graphene folks have at least been making progress on getting it working (my understanding is that Messages expects special permissions from Android and Play Services that GrapheneOS has to specifically whitelist without blowing massive holes in the Google Play sandbox, and without those permissions it fails to verify the phone number for certain carriers — T-Mobile included, in my case). Hopefully whatever fix they come up with works for the long haul; it was really annoying to have RCS working fine for all of two weeks only for it to immediately start failing again when the required RCS endpoint switched from Google's Jibe instance to whatever T-Mobile is allegedly maintaining themselves.

Fire-Dragon-DoL 11mo ago
To be fair this is a north america problem. The rest of the world is on WhatsApp and doesn't even know what RCS messaging is. But here in North America,we like pain.
- seany 11mo ago
  Are there reasonable foss WhatsApp clients?
- YellowTech 11mo ago
  Not that a Meta product is a perfect solution either
- zdragnar 11mo ago
  Early adopter syndrome strikes again. None of my friends or family have Whatsapp, Whatsapp doesn't (currently) work with other services, and all of us have had SMS for nearly as long as we have had cell phones. Slow cable Internet and 120v residential electricity are two more examples. I fortunately have fiber now, but I'll be stuck dreaming of 240v outlets and appliances for the rest of my life.
  - bombela 11mo ago
    Ovens, induction cooking, electric car charging, dryer etc is already 240V at high amperage. With a dedicated circuit. EU also mandates dedicated circuits for big appliances, so there is no difference in practice. The two things I can think of are electric kettle and a raclette machine. Tools are mostly battery powered those days. A home workshop would most likely be wired in 240 or three phases anyways. What else are you missing?
    - zdragnar 11mo ago
      Alas, my workshop didn't come with 240 already run, so that was an added expense to get my welder set up. An electric tea kettle that didn't take an hour to warm up would be very nice. My well pump runs on 120v, and when the motor kicks in the whole house knows. 240v has lower voltage drop over distances, puts off less heat due to lower amperage for the same wattage, and since we're dreaming, we could switch over to a sane plug design like Type F or G instead of A and B.
      - tredre3 11mo ago
        > An electric tea kettle that didn't take an hour to warm up would be very nice. I've been using electric kettles in north america and whilst they take longer, we're talking 5 minutes not an hour. Some hyperbole can be appropriate but you're just being disingenuous here, or you've never actually used a kettle.
  - rxyz 11mo ago
    I don’t believe early adoption applies to SMS. In a lot of Europe people just migrated from SMS to other services around 2010 because it worked better
  - Fire-Dragon-DoL 11mo ago
    Yeah but sms just doesn't support modern messaging (rcs probably does). Very poor quality for images and videos, emoji reactions, editable messages, deletable messages, group administration.
  - 11mo ago
- freddie_mercury 11mo ago
  The rest of the world isn't on WhatsApp. What a bizarre claim. Vietnam uses Zalo. Japan uses Line. Korea uses Kakaotalk. China uses WeChat. Iran is Telegram. And in the US more people are using iMessage than SMS thanks to iPhone's 58% market share.
  - lawgimenez 11mo ago
    The other countries not mentioned are on Facebook's Messenger.
    - piva00 11mo ago
      I think Germany has a high amount of users on Signal, it's quite interesting seeing the stats about messaging apps in different countries, it's very fractured internationally while being very consistent inside borders. I for one fucking hate that most of Sweden uses FB Messenger, it's the clunkiest of them all, and since I don't like using it all I constantly miss important messages from friends from not having the app installed and checking Facebook once in a blue moon :/
      - reddalo 11mo ago
        >it's very fractured internationally while being very consistent inside borders I think it's caused by the network effect [1]. >I for one fucking hate that most of Sweden uses FB Messenger I agree. Denmark is the same, everybody uses FB Messenger or, even worse, Snapchat. And don't even get me started on payment systems: Sweden has Swish, Denmark has MobilePay, Italy has Satispay, etc. It's completely fractured and it's so annyoing when travelling across the EU. At least there's a new European system called Wero [2], I wonder if it's going to help fixing this situation. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect [2] https://wero-wallet.eu/ https://wero-wallet.eu/
      - xethos 11mo ago
        This is probably a lot more work than you're willing to put in, but the Facebook Messenger bridge for Matrix has actually been reliable, set'n'forget, and headache-free for me, whenever I have to use it for Marketplace. I wouldn't otherwise mention it, but this is one of the few sites where "Stand up your own messaging server" isn't a completely insane suggestion.
- Cloudef 11mo ago
  I remember installing WhatsApp and it proceeded to delete all contacts from my phone. Haven't ever installed WhatsApp ever since. Have told people to either contact me through e-mail, google chat, LINE, discord or irc after that incident.
- lloeki 11mo ago
  > The rest of the world is on WhatsApp and doesn't even know what RCS messaging is. Absolutely _not_ the case here (France), the overwhelming default is SMS (and now RCS). Sure people use WhatsApp but also Telegram just as much these days, but in both cases it's _not the default_. Maybe because it's been, I don't know, one to two decades that SMS have been unlimited in even the most basic plans. Also RCS Just Works here, I've seen my non-Apple contacts move to RCS over time as they got OS or phone upgrades. I'd blame NA carriers, which, from afar, seem to have a habit of screwing up in so many ways.
  - aidenn0 11mo ago
    I refuse to use Google's builtin messenger so RCS definitely won't "Just Work" with me...
  - benhurmarcel 11mo ago
    I guess it depends on each other’s bubble. In France my perception is that most messaging is on Whatsapp. Not that I’m happy about that…
- benrutter 11mo ago
  I don't know- I'm in England whastapp is the default and it makes me sad. I was hoping when I first learnt about RCS that it could be an alternative to Meta owning everyone's comminications channels, but I've given up that hope a fair while ago.
- tauntz 11mo ago
  > The rest of the world is on WhatsApp That's not true at all. Random data point. Estonia. I have a _single_ contact that uses WhatsApp. Everybody else is reachable via FB Messenger/Discord/SMS/Signal/Google Chat/Instagram.
  - jaffa2 11mo ago
    Can you not just sms your contacts? Why everything have to be an app?
  - Fire-Dragon-DoL 11mo ago
    Last time I checked the usage percentage of whatsapp was extremely high in the whole world. China is always an exception,but they are locked partially out of the whole internet
    - bashkiddie 11mo ago
      I have WeChat and WhatsApp. From a user perspective they do not differ much. There is a rumor when both companies tried to enter the Indian market: Whatsapp won. WeChat assumes there is good reception and fast data transfer anywhere so there is no need to compress pictures and videos. Whatsapp could be passed as Android APK between phones. And it resizes and recompresses every picture you send. So thats my guess why WhatsApp won 1/6 of the planets pooulation in India.
- binkHN 11mo ago
  The fact that the "rest of the world" is using a messaging app that's owned by one company is ridiculous.
  - Fire-Dragon-DoL 11mo ago
    Unfortunately on the web it's like this for almost everything, messaging is no different.
    - binkHN 11mo ago
      I can use email from multiple providers without issue and it interoperates nicely with anyone else who has an email address.
      - Fire-Dragon-DoL 11mo ago
        I'm not saying it's 100% that way, but a large chunk works like that. Videoconference, chat, collaborative document editing are pretty much centralized in the hands of private companies, even if open source solutions do exist. SMS also has crazy weird limitations with messaging across countries due to ISP pricing, even though the messaging apps such as whatsapp have no problem with this.
        binkHN 11mo ago
        > SMS also has crazy weird limitations with messaging across countries due to ISP pricing Yeah, the carriers shot themselves in the foot here trying to monetize this and they opened the flood gates for replacements to come to fruition.
- chrismorgan 11mo ago
  No, in India RCS is a thing. It’s popular as an spam distribution channel and nothing else, so people may learn just enough about it to turn it off.
jeroenhd 11mo ago
One issue with Google's RCS implementation is that they've added root detection, something mandatory if you follow the RCS payments spec. Google will probably eventually want to mirror Apple's "send money*" feature to their messenger which precludes GrapheneOS and other non-official software (including Google's GSI images). *: unless someone does a chargeback after, which makes the money disappear from your account, a major source of "oops I accidentally sent (too much) money (to the wrong person)" scams
- yellowapple 11mo ago
  Yeah, that root detection is the bane of my existence, beyond just RCS. Even entirely ignoring my phone having much stronger security than with the stock OS (and therefore rendering the whole “security” excuse to be complete BS), if I want to take on the risk of using an “insecure” device for payments or whatever then that's my choice to make and mine alone.
  - ChadNauseam 11mo ago
    Your credit card probably has a policy where they take on the liability for fraud. At least in that case, you're not the one primarily taking on the risk for using an insecure device
    - yellowapple 11mo ago
      The risk they'd allegedly take on by letting me use an “insecure” device is far lower than the risk already inherent in, say, the card having an RFID chip in it that anyone can silently scan from a distance unless I happen to have the foresight to buy and use a fancy RF-blocking wallet (that actually does block RF signals), or the card having all of the authenticating info¹ printed directly on it such that anyone who has access to it for the whole three seconds it takes to snap a photo of both sides can then use it to make purchases on quite literally every website that accepts credit cards. Needless to say: letting me use an “insecure” device for tap-to-pay would considerably lower their risk compared to me not using a device at all and instead using a physical card — even, again, ignoring that my device is in all likelihood considerably more secure (and therefore exposing them to even less risk) than it was in its stock configuration. ---- ¹ except for my ZIP code, which is easily guessable if you know roughly where I live — which I don't exactly keep particularly secret!

Fire-Dragon-DoL 11mo ago

To be fair this is a north america problem. The rest of the world is on WhatsApp and doesn't even know what RCS messaging is. But here in North America,we like pain.

seany 11mo ago
Are there reasonable foss WhatsApp clients?
YellowTech 11mo ago
Not that a Meta product is a perfect solution either
zdragnar 11mo ago
Early adopter syndrome strikes again. None of my friends or family have Whatsapp, Whatsapp doesn't (currently) work with other services, and all of us have had SMS for nearly as long as we have had cell phones. Slow cable Internet and 120v residential electricity are two more examples. I fortunately have fiber now, but I'll be stuck dreaming of 240v outlets and appliances for the rest of my life.
- bombela 11mo ago
  Ovens, induction cooking, electric car charging, dryer etc is already 240V at high amperage. With a dedicated circuit. EU also mandates dedicated circuits for big appliances, so there is no difference in practice. The two things I can think of are electric kettle and a raclette machine. Tools are mostly battery powered those days. A home workshop would most likely be wired in 240 or three phases anyways. What else are you missing?
  - zdragnar 11mo ago
    Alas, my workshop didn't come with 240 already run, so that was an added expense to get my welder set up. An electric tea kettle that didn't take an hour to warm up would be very nice. My well pump runs on 120v, and when the motor kicks in the whole house knows. 240v has lower voltage drop over distances, puts off less heat due to lower amperage for the same wattage, and since we're dreaming, we could switch over to a sane plug design like Type F or G instead of A and B.
    - tredre3 11mo ago
      > An electric tea kettle that didn't take an hour to warm up would be very nice. I've been using electric kettles in north america and whilst they take longer, we're talking 5 minutes not an hour. Some hyperbole can be appropriate but you're just being disingenuous here, or you've never actually used a kettle.
- rxyz 11mo ago
  I don’t believe early adoption applies to SMS. In a lot of Europe people just migrated from SMS to other services around 2010 because it worked better
- Fire-Dragon-DoL 11mo ago
  Yeah but sms just doesn't support modern messaging (rcs probably does). Very poor quality for images and videos, emoji reactions, editable messages, deletable messages, group administration.
- 11mo ago
freddie_mercury 11mo ago
The rest of the world isn't on WhatsApp. What a bizarre claim. Vietnam uses Zalo. Japan uses Line. Korea uses Kakaotalk. China uses WeChat. Iran is Telegram. And in the US more people are using iMessage than SMS thanks to iPhone's 58% market share.
- lawgimenez 11mo ago
  The other countries not mentioned are on Facebook's Messenger.
  - piva00 11mo ago
    I think Germany has a high amount of users on Signal, it's quite interesting seeing the stats about messaging apps in different countries, it's very fractured internationally while being very consistent inside borders. I for one fucking hate that most of Sweden uses FB Messenger, it's the clunkiest of them all, and since I don't like using it all I constantly miss important messages from friends from not having the app installed and checking Facebook once in a blue moon :/
    - reddalo 11mo ago
      >it's very fractured internationally while being very consistent inside borders I think it's caused by the network effect [1]. >I for one fucking hate that most of Sweden uses FB Messenger I agree. Denmark is the same, everybody uses FB Messenger or, even worse, Snapchat. And don't even get me started on payment systems: Sweden has Swish, Denmark has MobilePay, Italy has Satispay, etc. It's completely fractured and it's so annyoing when travelling across the EU. At least there's a new European system called Wero [2], I wonder if it's going to help fixing this situation. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect [2] https://wero-wallet.eu/ https://wero-wallet.eu/
    - xethos 11mo ago
      This is probably a lot more work than you're willing to put in, but the Facebook Messenger bridge for Matrix has actually been reliable, set'n'forget, and headache-free for me, whenever I have to use it for Marketplace. I wouldn't otherwise mention it, but this is one of the few sites where "Stand up your own messaging server" isn't a completely insane suggestion.
Cloudef 11mo ago
I remember installing WhatsApp and it proceeded to delete all contacts from my phone. Haven't ever installed WhatsApp ever since. Have told people to either contact me through e-mail, google chat, LINE, discord or irc after that incident.
lloeki 11mo ago
> The rest of the world is on WhatsApp and doesn't even know what RCS messaging is. Absolutely _not_ the case here (France), the overwhelming default is SMS (and now RCS). Sure people use WhatsApp but also Telegram just as much these days, but in both cases it's _not the default_. Maybe because it's been, I don't know, one to two decades that SMS have been unlimited in even the most basic plans. Also RCS Just Works here, I've seen my non-Apple contacts move to RCS over time as they got OS or phone upgrades. I'd blame NA carriers, which, from afar, seem to have a habit of screwing up in so many ways.
- aidenn0 11mo ago
  I refuse to use Google's builtin messenger so RCS definitely won't "Just Work" with me...
- benhurmarcel 11mo ago
  I guess it depends on each other’s bubble. In France my perception is that most messaging is on Whatsapp. Not that I’m happy about that…
benrutter 11mo ago
I don't know- I'm in England whastapp is the default and it makes me sad. I was hoping when I first learnt about RCS that it could be an alternative to Meta owning everyone's comminications channels, but I've given up that hope a fair while ago.
tauntz 11mo ago
> The rest of the world is on WhatsApp That's not true at all. Random data point. Estonia. I have a _single_ contact that uses WhatsApp. Everybody else is reachable via FB Messenger/Discord/SMS/Signal/Google Chat/Instagram.
- jaffa2 11mo ago
  Can you not just sms your contacts? Why everything have to be an app?
- Fire-Dragon-DoL 11mo ago
  Last time I checked the usage percentage of whatsapp was extremely high in the whole world. China is always an exception,but they are locked partially out of the whole internet
  - bashkiddie 11mo ago
    I have WeChat and WhatsApp. From a user perspective they do not differ much. There is a rumor when both companies tried to enter the Indian market: Whatsapp won. WeChat assumes there is good reception and fast data transfer anywhere so there is no need to compress pictures and videos. Whatsapp could be passed as Android APK between phones. And it resizes and recompresses every picture you send. So thats my guess why WhatsApp won 1/6 of the planets pooulation in India.
binkHN 11mo ago
The fact that the "rest of the world" is using a messaging app that's owned by one company is ridiculous.
- Fire-Dragon-DoL 11mo ago
  Unfortunately on the web it's like this for almost everything, messaging is no different.
  - binkHN 11mo ago
    I can use email from multiple providers without issue and it interoperates nicely with anyone else who has an email address.
    - Fire-Dragon-DoL 11mo ago
      I'm not saying it's 100% that way, but a large chunk works like that. Videoconference, chat, collaborative document editing are pretty much centralized in the hands of private companies, even if open source solutions do exist. SMS also has crazy weird limitations with messaging across countries due to ISP pricing, even though the messaging apps such as whatsapp have no problem with this.
      - binkHN 11mo ago
        > SMS also has crazy weird limitations with messaging across countries due to ISP pricing Yeah, the carriers shot themselves in the foot here trying to monetize this and they opened the flood gates for replacements to come to fruition.
chrismorgan 11mo ago
No, in India RCS is a thing. It’s popular as an spam distribution channel and nothing else, so people may learn just enough about it to turn it off.

jeroenhd 11mo ago

One issue with Google's RCS implementation is that they've added root detection, something mandatory if you follow the RCS payments spec. Google will probably eventually want to mirror Apple's "send money*" feature to their messenger which precludes GrapheneOS and other non-official software (including Google's GSI images). *: unless someone does a chargeback after, which makes the money disappear from your account, a major source of "oops I accidentally sent (too much) money (to the wrong person)" scams

yellowapple 11mo ago
Yeah, that root detection is the bane of my existence, beyond just RCS. Even entirely ignoring my phone having much stronger security than with the stock OS (and therefore rendering the whole “security” excuse to be complete BS), if I want to take on the risk of using an “insecure” device for payments or whatever then that's my choice to make and mine alone.
- ChadNauseam 11mo ago
  Your credit card probably has a policy where they take on the liability for fraud. At least in that case, you're not the one primarily taking on the risk for using an insecure device
  - yellowapple 11mo ago
    The risk they'd allegedly take on by letting me use an “insecure” device is far lower than the risk already inherent in, say, the card having an RFID chip in it that anyone can silently scan from a distance unless I happen to have the foresight to buy and use a fancy RF-blocking wallet (that actually does block RF signals), or the card having all of the authenticating info¹ printed directly on it such that anyone who has access to it for the whole three seconds it takes to snap a photo of both sides can then use it to make purchases on quite literally every website that accepts credit cards. Needless to say: letting me use an “insecure” device for tap-to-pay would considerably lower their risk compared to me not using a device at all and instead using a physical card — even, again, ignoring that my device is in all likelihood considerably more secure (and therefore exposing them to even less risk) than it was in its stock configuration. ---- ¹ except for my ZIP code, which is easily guessable if you know roughly where I live — which I don't exactly keep particularly secret!