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Google adds(?) automated phone number verification by "periodically" obtaining your number from your carrier. (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 1 week ago by to c/android@lemmy.world
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"This helps people reach you in video calls, messages, and more."

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[–] 5 points 1 week ago (2 children)

None "just work".

SMS did. But it got dated fast...like, as soon as camera phones came out.

RCS came out around 2007 and was defined by GSMA as the next generation of SMS, but they struggled with carrier and device compatibility until 2016-ish.

By then, iMessaging had already been around for several years.

Apple could've opened up iMessage. Google could have forced Android towards GTalk/Hangouts/GVoice, but instead joined up with a pre-existing standard.

Plenty of stories where Google is the bad guy (including one, I thought, where they basically hijacked the XMPP project, but I could be misremembering)...but I don't think RCS, itself, is one.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 week ago

    From what I could gather:

    RCS is not supported by the Android system - probably because Gurgle doesn't want to (not sure about iOS). Also quite few carriers still do not support it. So if you manage to send a message, you have no guarantee that it would arrive in the same format you would expect.

    The only advantage it has is that you don't have to create an account anywhere and you can simply use a phone number to send it. However, that is also it's biggest downside, because you would have to give your phone number to other people or services, which is not a good idea in this age.

    It may have been a good idea around 2007, but it's too late now.

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