What is RCS messaging?

You may have heard of MMS and SMS, but what about RCS? RCS stands for Rich Communications Services. It lets you send high-res photos and videos, enables read receipts and allows you to add and remove people from your group chat, even if one of you uses iPhone and one of you uses an Android phone. That’s right: it’s basically world peace for green and blue bubbles. 

Below, we’ll go into everything else you need to know about RCS.

What is an RCS message?

As mentioned above, Rich Communication Services is a type of messaging that lets you send high-res, multimedia messages and share files without significant compression (that’s right, it’s Spanx-free file sharing). Also, you can enable read receipts on your messages and it allows for typing indicators—basically, it’s perfect for nosy people. And until recently, it was only available for Android phones, but as of iOS 18, it’s now available for iPhones. It’s kind of the next step in texting, with improved features over both SMS and MMS. RCS offers a significant upgrade in terms of features and user experience for both sender and receiver when they have RCS enabled. 

How does RCS messaging work? 

RCS is sent via either mobile data or Wi-Fi. To get RCS messages, both you and the person you’re texting will have to enable RCS on your respective phones. If not, everything will look like a regular old SMS or MMS.

To enable it on iPhone, you’ll need to have iOS 18 installed, then:

1. Tap Settings 
2. Select Apps 
3. Open Messages 
4. Tap RCS Messaging and toggle it on 

To enable on an Android phone:

1. Open Google Messages
2. Tap your profile picture or icon and then Messages settings
3. Tap RCS chats
4. Turn RCS chats on

CS features and benefits 

There are a ton of benefits to using RCS messaging for both Android and iPhone users:

• Send high-res photos and videos
• Send GIFs (cat or otherwise)
• Use text reactions (for those “!!” moments)
• Add and remove people from your group chat (peace out old coworker group chats) 
• Extra secure texting thanks to end-to-end encryption
• Typing indicators are enabled 
• Turn on read receipts
• Geolocation sharing
• And for the oversharers, messages aren’t limited to 160 characters

Does RCS cost money? 

When you use RCS, messages are sent over Wi-Fi and mobile data. As long as you’re on Wi-Fi, whether it’s your own or your local coffee shop’s, there should be no cost to send and receive texts, photos or cat GIFs using RCS. On the other hand, if you use mobile data, the cost will be based on your plan. 

And that’s the 411 on RCS

Now you know all about this Ridiculously Cool Service. Did you know Mint Mobile also offers RCS for iPhone and Android? Learn all about RCS on Mint or tap the button below to learn more about our plans in general. Because we welcome everyone to the movemint—whether you’re a green or blue bubble.