It may appear that with the coming of the new text messaging apps that let its users send and receive SMS for free of cost, the old school text messaging has almost become obsolete. But this is not true. According to a recent survey, it has surfaced that people still send some 8 trillion texts a year. So Google decided to develop and improve the simple texting method. Google is building Chat, a texting experience that is claiming to replace the traditional SMS on Android devices. Google has been talking about releasing Google Chat in the market in the upcoming months.
RCS or Rich Communication Services is playing a major part in this endeavor since the whole thing is building on the Universal Profile for RCS. It will have all the modern features of messaging like reading receipts, typing indicators, full resolution images, and video and even group chats combined in one system. Previously it was possible on iOS devices, but Google has designed it for Android phones only. If two Android phones have carriers supporting RCS, this feature should work fine.
The users only will be charged for the data consumed for sending the message instead of deducting the balance from the user’s plan for sending an SMS. But, if the text is sent to someone who does not have Chat enabled, including iOS users, they will just receive plain SMS messages. It will be possible to text people from Windows 10 machines too. There is only one downfall to Google Chat: Chat is not encrypted. The messages that the users send will be stored on the user’s carrier servers in a readable format.
It’s a huge deal for Android and Google since they have partnered with some 50+ carriers worldwide and numerous hardware makers. Anil Sabharwal, the head of the project at Google, says that Chat should become available in the US by the end of this year. But not everyone is excited about it since it does not offer anything new which is not already available in this era of WhatsApp texting and WhatsApp texts are far safer than that. They are just trying to boost up the traditional text messaging system.
