Earlier this week, some Android users discovered a way to enable rich chat services (Chat) on almost any phone with almost any carrier, but now it seems like Google or the carriers have patched the workaround.
It seems like the latest version of messages is messing with Chat on OnePlus phones and a few others. At least that’s the running theory from a user on the XDA Developer forums. Some other users on Reddit seem to think that the issue is specifically effecting phones with dual SIM cards.
Either way, this may be the beginning of the end for users who want to hack their way around the carriers’ RCS limits.
If you used the workaround and it’s disabled now, make sure to check out these two Reddit posts and the XDA forum post to try and troubleshoot a way to fix it.
For those who don’t know, Chat is a feature in the Android messages app that works like iMessage does on iOS. The only issue with it is that your wireless carrier needs to roll out support for it, because of that, only select phones on select networks have access to it.
The hack from earlier this week allowed users to download a specific app called ‘Activity Launcher’ and then tweak a few phone settings to get around the carrier support. This meant that almost any phone could use the handy texting feature.
Here’s hoping that this workaround continues to work for users since it’s likely the only way that some phones are ever going to get Chat support.
Source: Reddit, (1), XDA Developers Fourms Via: 9to5Google
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