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.

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Fire-Dragon-DoL 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

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.

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freddie_mercury 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

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.

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lawgimenez 3 hours ago | parent [-]

The other countries not mentioned are on Facebook's Messenger.

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piva00 3 hours ago | parent [-]

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 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		>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 [2] https://wero-wallet.eu/

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lloeki 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> 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.

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zdragnar 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		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?

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tauntz 12 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> 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.

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benrutter 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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.

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YellowTech 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Not that a Meta product is a perfect solution either

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Cloudef 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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.

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seany 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Are there reasonable foss WhatsApp clients?

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jeroenhd 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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