For those who don’t know, Rich Communication Services (RCS) is essentially a communication protocol between mobile-telephone carriers and between phone and carrier. It aims to replace traditional SMS messages with a text-message system that is richer, provides phonebook polling (for service discovery), and transmit in-call multimedia. Starting today, RCS is available on phones designed for Google Fi as well as compatible Android phones – if you’re using a phone designed for Fi, RCS will be automatically enabled. Read more for another video explaining what this technology actually does.
If you’re not using Google Fi, but have a compatible Android phone, you’ll need to download Messages and set it as your default messaging app before seeing the prompts to enable RCS. “You’ll be able to see typing indicators and read receipts, share high-resolution videos, and message over Wi-Fi or data with others that have RCS enabled,” said Google.