Late in June, I reported that RCS was going live for some iPhone users running the second iOS beta. However, at the time, it seemed limited to some U.S. carriers. Following the release of the third iOS 18 beta, RCS appears to be live for Canadians, too.
So far, I’ve seen reports on Reddit of people successfully using RCS on Freedom, Telus and Bell. MobileSyrup was able to independently confirm that RCS is working on Bell. MobileSyrup contributor Karandeep Oberoi and I were able to chat via RCS. I was using a Pixel 8a on Koodo, while Oberoi used an iPhone on Bell.
In our testing, sharing media worked well — photos sent from both our devices came through with slight compression but overall looked great. Typing indicators also worked for us. Some features didnt’ work properly, such as reactions and replies. Of course, RCS on iPhone is still early stages, so it will likely improve as we get closer to the official iOS 18 launch.
Update 09/07/2024 at 4:07pm ET: After doing more testing, it seems like reactions do work. While messaging between myself and MobileSyrup’s head of creative, Brad Bennett, reactions were working. Bennett’s iPhone is on Freedom, but I re-tested reactions with Oberoi on Bell, and they worked there, too. Notably, only some emojis worked for reactions, like the heart or socks (why lol), while others, like the invisible emoji, didn’t. And even the ones that worked were inconsistent and didn’t always work.
Replies, however, don’t seem to work properly yet. It’s not clear what changed with reactions or why things are so inconsistent. Android Authority did report that a new update to RCS adds native support for reactions and other features, which should hopefully address the inconsistencies present in the current implementation.
Another Reddit thread indicates Rogers users aren’t able to access RCS with the iOS 18 beta yet, though that could change soon.
While not every carrier supports it yet, it looks like RCS on iPhone is moving ahead fairly quickly. When iOS 18 drops in the fall, it should finally usher in a new era of improved communications between iOS and Android users.
If you’re running the iOS 18 beta, you can try RCS by heading into Settings > Apps > Messages > Scroll to Text Messaging > Tap RCS Messaging > Toggle RCS Messaging to on. Some people report having to reboot after changing the setting to get it to work.
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