Google is silently blocking RCS on rooted Android phones and custom ROMs (Update)
www.androidauthority.com
Google famously campaigned for Apple to "get the message" and use RCS, but now doesn't let rooted Android users use RCS.

TL;DR

  • Users who have rooted their phone, have their bootloader unlocked or are using some custom ROMs report that their RCS messages are not being sent, even though RCS shows them as connected.
  • The Google Messages app does not show any error messages when blocking RCS messages of these users and does not send the messages out as SMS or MMS either.
  • Google famously campaigned for Apple to include RCS messaging in iMessage but is now blocking it for certain Android users.
  • KrapKake@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1171·
    8 months ago

    I knew it! I had the sneaking suspicion that this was the case. About a month ago I updated my phone to Android 14 (custom rom) and noticed I started having trouble with RCS after a couple days since the update. I knew I was going to lose the play integrity but whatever. RCS was nice but I will not bend… just pushing me a step further to de-googling my phone. Lol it’s funny how they cry to Apple about supporting RCS but yet refuse to allow third party apps or phones that don’t meet their requirements, pathetic. There should be an encrypted text communication standard that isn’t controlled by one company who can lock you out because you don’t have approved software, that is ridiculous. That being said, I wish Signal was still a SMS app.

    • EngineerGaming@feddit.nlEnglish
      27·
      8 months ago

      There should be an encrypted text communication standard that isn’t controlled by one company who can lock you out because you don’t have approved software

      XMPP + OMEMO

        • EngineerGaming@feddit.nlEnglish
          51·
          8 months ago

          That too, but it is more resource-hungry to host (my biggest problem is that I have very limited storage and haven’t quite figured out how to disable media downloads from all rooms). But yea, indeed still an option.

            • Ohh@lemmy.mlEnglish
              2·
              8 months ago

              I think the conduite server should be very lightweight, secure and easy to set up. But it’s leaking video

              • EngineerGaming@feddit.nlEnglish
                1·
                8 months ago

                Yea, Synapse was out of the question for my low-power VPS, so I was going to try either this one or Dendrite. Just that last time I looked, I did not resolve the storage concerns. Ideally, I would like to not save any media and text that comes from federated servers.

      • KrapKake@lemmy.worldEnglish
        5·
        8 months ago

        Needs to be something like family is going to use you see. Which is why I liked what Signal had since it doubled as SMS.

      • JasonDJ@lemmy.zipEnglish
        2·
        8 months ago

        Great example since Google essentially hijacked XMPP and took it into a fully-intentional nosedive.

    • thorbot@lemmy.worldEnglish
      41·
      8 months ago

      You should have De googled a long time ago, they always pull this kind of shit

      • KrapKake@lemmy.worldEnglish
        4·
        8 months ago

        I agree but there’s 2 apps there is no good alternative for and they are paid, at least one of them I am learning Android studio + Kotlin to recreate it. The other I have found Wx which is OK but besides that there is no good advanced weather radar.

          • KrapKake@lemmy.worldEnglish
            3·
            8 months ago

            Yea tried that already, one won’t work at all and one will stop working after sometime. I assume it still has something to do with google services. I have not tried with microg. Either way… I’ll get there to google-free land eventually its a work in progress. Sometimes I do consider just ripping off the band-aid and installing raw lineage os then learn to deal with it from there.