Celebrating 30th Birthday of SMS – Short Message Service! The first SMS, wishing ‘Merry Christmas’ was sent by a software engineer on 3rd December 1992! Most of the first generation mobile phone users would have sent a free SMS as the first operation on their phone to simply get it activated!
To celebrate SMS’ 30th birthday, Google announced that its Messages app will support end-to-end encryption for group chats over the coming weeks – a feature that’s been available for one-on-one conversations for a couple of years.
Texting changed the way we communicate, but it’s out of date (today almost 30 years out of date!). Today we want messaging that lets us do things like share high-res photos and larger files, chat with a group, know when messages are read, or make video calls. To introduce all these features into text messaging, Google had introduced Rich Communication Services (RCS). Google’s native messaging client, Messages, supports RCS.
Most of the mobile world is using RCS, but there is one company, Apple, that’s dragging its heels. But after 30 years of SMS texting, it’s truly time. So here are three big reasons why the whole industry should get behind RCS — one for every decade SMS has been around.
It’s been a long known resistance from Apple to accept the RCS standard, considering all the features of RCS are already available since long, on their iMessages app, although it is restricted to only the iPhone users.
With RCS, Google had already brought end-to-end encryption to messaging, and with its biggest messaging competitor, WhatsApp and its own ever changing chat and messaging strategies, today Google is getting end-to-end encryption to its group messages.
In addition to announcing end-to-end encryption for group chats, Google also announced that the Messages app will soon let users react to RCS (Rich Communication Services) messages with any emoji, similar to WhatsApp.
Here’s wishing a very Happy 30th Birthday to SMS and wishing it a happy farewell for good!
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