Yesterday, Apple announced that it will be supporting RCS Universal Profile 3.0 in “future software updates.” While this does have one large benefit of bringing end-to-end encryption to iPhone users using RCS, it has a number of other benefits that aren’t yet being mentioned.
iOS 18 uses a dated version of RCS
When Apple introduced RCS messaging to iPhone as part of iOS 18, it supported version 2.4. This still introduced a number of quality of life improvements for texting Android users, such as higher quality images, read receipts, and more – but it still missed out on a lot.
The GSMA announced RCS version 2.7 in June 2024, which standardized a number of noteworthy feature improvements for RCS. This includes the ability to reply and react to messages (including with custom reactions), as well as the ability for message senders to edit, recall, and delete messages.
Custom reactions are an “existing or generated image,” so it’d theoretically be possible for iPhone users to share Genmoji’s over RCS.
However, since this RCS upgrade was announced after Apple implemented RCS in iOS 18, iPhone users do not get to benefit from these upgrades.
iOS 19 will support RCS 3.0
In a statement yesterday, Apple shared that it plans to support end-to-end encryption in a future software update, meaning that the company would be supporting RCS Universal Profile 3.0.
As a result, Apple will be taking the leap from RCS version 2.4 to RCS version 3.0, bringing along all of the great upgrades introduced in version 2.7, as well as the now confirmed end-to-end-encryption upgrade.
Apple hasn’t provided a specific timeline for supporting RCS version 3.0, other than the fact that it’d be in a future software update, likely sometime in the iOS 19 lifecycle. Here’s Apple’s statement on the matter:
End-to-end encryption is a powerful privacy and security technology that iMessage has supported since the beginning, and now we are pleased to have helped lead a cross industry effort to bring end-to-end encryption to the RCS Universal Profile published by the GSMA. We will add support for end-to-end encrypted RCS messages to iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and watchOS in future software updates.
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