Why is RCS not working between my iPhone running iOS 18 and Android?

1st tier Verizon support was able to “restart text service”. It required me to shut off my phone so you can’t call on the line you need to restart. Also I am revolving texts from everyone now but my RCS is still not active. Verizon currently reports RCS outages (iPhone 16 launch broke their server I bet) all over and issued me a refund for the affected period of service outage.

Fuzzylobes wrote:

My other lines that family members use iPhones have their RCS Messages work flawlessly. My line is the one with the problem and even under eSIM it shows only Voice and SMS is provided for service and not RCS.

That probably means that your line was not provisioned correctly in the carrier’s network. Call them and request that they either add the feature or reprovision your account.

OR it means that you do not have Cellular Data enabled on your iPhone. MMS and RCS (and Visual Voicemail) require cellular data to work, they cannot use Wi-Fi.

OR it means that you have a corrupt VPN profile.

I wish I knew who "they" was. I don't understand how this is supposed to work.

I have T-Mobile. I have an iPhone 14PM. I have never gotten clear indication on where the fault lies for this.

I know that this has nothing to do with the recipient because my actual device keeps switching back to SMS based on Settings > About. When I tap on the ESIM Carrier, it shows Voice, SMS & RCS when RCS is available and Voice & SMS when it's not.

I just discovered that if I shut off my line and turn it back on, RCS does come back.

Apple and Google are alleged to be talking to each other about adding encryption that works on both platforms. iMessage has end-to-end encryption between iOS users. Google has end-to-end encryption between Android users. iOS -><-Android does not have encryption yet unless both sides are using a third party messaging app like WhatsApp.

As others noted, there are significant advantages to sending RCS vs SMS especially if you send images or videos to Android users.

But I think your comment is overly simplistic as to the problems people are experiencing on this thread. Some people are having issues with their carrier support of RCS. But other people are having problems that might be issues with Apple’s implementation. For instance, when I upgraded to a new phone, RCS threads from my old device broke while new RCS threads worked. I suspect that was an issue with how Apple migrated older RCS threads to a new device.

In any event, RCS can’t work if Apple doesn’t implement it well on its own devices. So you can’t definitively say it’s a carrier issue. It might be a carrier issue in many cases (or even most cases), but RCS is a complex service that requires the entire stack to work together.

Thanks for your comment, but I don't agree with you in total. Apple opened the channel or service to RCS on iPhone. It's in the hands of carriers to use that channel reliably. Just like Apple doesn't send or deliver SMS/MMS. Carriers do.

I would disable rcs chat on both phones, and then do a setting reset on the iPhone and an app reset on the android phone. on the android phone you may also have to stop the google messaging app and clear cache and data, then start it back up.

apple Reset iPhone settings to their defaults - Apple Support

Droid/ google https://support.google.com/messages/answer/9363493?hl=en#zippy=%2Cstep-clear-google-messages

I would disable rcs chat on both phones, and then do a setting reset on the iPhone and an app reset on the android phone. on the android phone you may also have to stop the google messaging app and clear cache and data, then start it back up.

apple Reset iPhone settings to their defaults - Apple Support

Droid/ google https://support.google.com/messages/answer/9363493?hl=en#zippy=%2Cstep-clear-google-messages

See this Apple support document that lists the carriers that support RCS.

Wireless carrier support and features for iPhone in the United States and Canada - Apple Support

And this link to a 9to5Mac article about RCS

https://9to5mac.com/2024/09/16/heres-how-to-check-if-your-carrier-already-supports-rcs-on-iphone/

Your Android friend’s carrier must also support RCS as well as the Android phone itself.

Not sure if this will help but a couple of thoughts.

It’s possible your carrier does not support RCS yet. You can check here: Wireless carrier support and features for iPhone in the United States and Canada - Apple Support

Another issue is that RCS on iPhone does not work with VPNs (yet). Here’s an article that may help explain: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/rcs-messaging-and-mozilla-vpn

It’s specifically about Mozilla’s VPN, but it’s true for other VPNs too.

Best of luck to you.

amp68 wrote:

If you need to have a group chat with Android users, use ANYTHING ELSE. Don't like Telegram? There's a ton of other free chat clients out there.

Indeed:

• Skype
• Signal
• Microsoft Meet
• WhatsApp
• Facebook Messenger
• Google Chat
• Google Meet
• Zoom for real time
• Groups.io (for larger groups; free up to 100, $220/year for unlimited size groups)

Usmaak wrote:

This just keeps getting worse for me. For a while, the RCS would work for a while and then it would go back to SMS. Eventually it would come back to RCS again. Now I have to reboot my phone and it only stays RCS for an hour or two before reverting. I wish that there was at least a reliable way to get it to come back without having to restart my phone. I also wish that they would have waited to implement it until it was stable.

It is 100% stable on my iPhones. Just MAYBE the problem isn’t with Apple, as hard it is to believe that. There are many steps in the process of delivering RCS in addition to your iPhone:

• Your carrier’s network
• the individual MTSO’s in your carrier’s network, which may or may not have been updated to support RCS
• the carrier’s network of your recipient and its MTSOs
• whether or not the recipient is using an RCS compatible messaging app on Android (which requires a separate app as Android doesn’t support RCS natively)
• whether or not the recipient has a new enough device that supports RCS
• Whether you have cellular data enabled as required
• whether you have any apps installed that can block RCS, most especially VPN

Works fine on my iPhone 15 Pro Max on both the Verizon line and T-Mobile line. You may need to contact Verizon to make sure there isn’t a provision on their end that needs to be enabled or if you have to have specific plans (sometimes older grandfathered plans may be excluded from some features).

I'm running iOS 18 (was using public beta and RCS was working). Now just on mastered iOS 18 and RCS is still working.

If you are switching from Android to iPhone and still have your android phone, you might want to make sure you disabled RCS on that Android before switching to the iPhone — you may need to put your Sim back in the Android to do this.

Side note, sending texts via Satellite works too. Great for sending updates on status during remote hikes or anywhere you don't have signal.

T-Mobile (US)

iPhone 15 Pro Max

Almost all Android phones support RCS: "You must have Android 5.0 or higher for RCS chats to work. "