Google’s RCS messaging goes live in select countries

Google announced a few weeks ago that it would now take the reins of the RCS platform and work on rolling it out themselves. It looks like that’s happening quicker than expected, with Google now rolling out RCS to a few, select countries.

Rich Communication Services (RCS) is rolling out to users int he United Kingdom and France, according to a report from 9to5Google. It doesn’t appear that it’s called RCS either — Google is actually just calling it “Chat.””

Chat should work on any Android device, so long as that you’re using Messages — formerly called Android Messages — as your primary text platform.

While that’s supposed to be the case, for now, Chat will only work with Pixel devices that have physical SIM cards. We’ll see more expanded support soon.

source: 9to5Google