Calling all iPhone users who’ve been rocking the exclusive iMessage club for years… hold onto your emoji hats! Buckle up, because according to a rogue Google intern (and a now-deleted webpage – whoops!), a messaging revolution is brewing. Yes, you read that right. RCS might be crash-landing on iPhones this fall!

The rumor mill started churning, about RCS coming to iPhone, thanks to Google, who spilled the beans a little too early on their Google Messages page. The since-vanished blurb declared, “Apple has announced it will be adopting RCS in the fall of 2024.” Now, Apple themselves haven’t exactly confirmed this news with a confetti-filled press conference, but hey, a deleted webpage is practically an official announcement, right?

For those who’ve been living under a rock (or just haven’t texted an Android user in, well, forever), RCS is the fancy term for an upgrade to those prehistoric SMS texts. Think fancy chat features like disappearing messages, typing indicators, and file transfers that go beyond those pixelated cat memes. Basically, it’s the messaging upgrade we never knew we needed (until now!).

So, what does this mean for you, iPhone overlord? Well, get ready to ditch the green bubble blues! Texting with your Android-loving comrades will finally feel like a party, not a dusty, outdated chatroom. While the exact details of how RCS will integrate with the iMessage kingdom remain a mystery (think secret handshake or password?), it’s a giant leap towards a messaging utopia where bubbles are all created equal (even the boring green ones).

Now, before you start prepping your victory dance, remember – this is April 1st. So, take this news with a grain of salt (or a sprinkle of emoji dust, whichever you prefer). But hey, even if RCS on iPhones turns out to be a giant April Fool’s prank, at least we can all dream of a day when texting truly transcends the green bubble divide, right?

Hold on a sec, though! While RCS on iPhones this fall might be a future dream, there’s a bit of history here. Apple has been resistant to adopting RCS in the past. Some speculate they prefer users to stick within the iMessage ecosystem, where features like message encryption and tight integration with other Apple services might keep users loyal.

There have been rumors and discussions about Apple budging on RCS, but nothing official. So, for now, this April Fool’s story might have to wait a bit longer before becoming reality.

Google IO 2023 started with CEO Sundar Pichai’s keynote. The key announcements include Google Pixel Fold, Pixel Tablet, Pixel 7a, Android 14 and lots and lots of AI announcements. You can watch the complete keynote here…

Google Search

Undoubtedly Google’s most successful product, search is at the very core of Google’s mission. Google Search will be getting 2 new features.

Bringing Google’s generative AI Bard to its search platform, Generative AI capabilities in Search will help you when deciding what to buy. It taps into Google’s Shopping Graph, the world’s most comprehensive dataset of constantly-changing products, sellers, brands, reviews and inventory.

With the new generative AI experience in Search, you’ll get even more from a single search. You’ll be able to quickly make sense of information with an AI-powered snapshot, pointers to explore more and natural ways to ask.

What’s new from Android

Large-screen Android devices will be better than ever with more than 50 Google apps have been optimized for large screens, including Gmail, Photos and Meet. And your favorite apps like Spotify, Minecraft and Disney+ look beautiful and feel intuitive on larger screens.

With the foldables becoming the driving force to revive the tablets market, Google has been focusing on improving the Android experience on tablets.

The next screen real estate getting popularity is the smart watch market. Wear OS has grown over five times since the launch of Wear OS 3 in 2021, and it is the fastest-growing smartwatch platform in the world. Developers are investing in the platform as well. Soon, WhatsApp is bringing their first-ever smartwatch app to Wear OS, and more great experiences are coming this year from Gmail, Calendar and more.

Bringing the power of generative AI to Android, soon, you’ll be able to give your compose-itions an extra spark of personality. Magic Compose, a new Messages feature powered by generative AI, will help you transform your text message to your desired vibe before you hit send.

Pixel 7a

Pixel 7a, the next generation Pixel phones, is powered by Google’s Tensor G2 chip, 8GB RAM, 6.1 inch screen, a much larger camera sensor and will be going on sale today at the Google Store for $499. As a launch offer, Google is giving away their PixelBuds A-Series free of cost for a limited time!

Pixel Tablet

Large screens still have a lot of potential. PixelTablet is built to deliver uniquely helpful experiences—11 inch display, AI powered Google Tensor G2 chip, amazing battery life and a completely reimagined docking stand!

When the Pixel Tablet is in the docked or as Google calls it, in the hub mode, it turns into a digital photo frame and a voice assisted smart home controller.

Pixel Fold

One of the big announcements, unveiling the foldable Pixel phone. It’s also quite thin while folded, at 12.1 millimeters, the hinge is a big part of that. This is 180-degree fluid friction hinge, which means that you can put it to any place you want.

PixelFold is the thinnest foldable on the market. Comes with and expansive 7.6-inch immersive display and a 5.8-inch front display.

The device houses a three-camera system: a 48-megapixel main, 10.8-megapixel ultrawide and a 10.8-megapixel telephoto with 5x optical Zoom and 20x Super Res Zoom. The front-facing camera, meanwhile, is 9.5 megapixels. Is a IPX8 water-resistant design.

The real secret sauce in the Pixel Fold experience is, unsurprisingly, the software. The app continuity when switching between the external and internal screens is quite seamless, allowing you to pick where you left off as you change screen sizes. Naturally, Google has optimized its most popular third-party apps for the big screen experience, including Gmail and YouTube.

The system is powered by the same Tensor G2 chip you’ll find in the Pixel 7, 7a and Pixel tablet.

Starting at $1799, this ultra-premium device combines personal AI, Google Tensor G2, and innovation for a Pixel smartphone that unfolds into an incredible compact tablet. Google is giving away free Pixel Watch for limited time pre-orders!

Find my device, even when offline

Currently, Find My Device helps you locate misplaced devices that have location capabilities and are connected to the internet. However, Google will be launching a refreshed Find My Device experience that makes it easier than ever to locate your devices and belongings quickly and securely by ringing compatible devices or viewing their location on a map in the app – even when they’re offline.

The new Find My Device network will harness over a billion Android devices across the world to help you locate your missing belongings like headphones, tracker tags, or even your phone via Bluetooth proximity.

RCS adoption

When you are texting in a group chat, you shouldn’t have to worry about what kind of phone everyone is using – sharing high-quality images and video, seeing typing notifications and staying protected with end-to-end encryption should just work. Out with the old (SMS & MMS) and in with the new. RCS is a modern standard that provides end-to-end encryption and supports high quality videos and photos in texts. There are now over 800 million people with RCS, on the way to 1 billion by the end of the year.

Bard – Conversational AI from Google

Bard lets you collaborate with generative AI. Google is not only removing its waitlist for Bard and making it available, in English, in over 180 countries and territories, but it’s also launching support for Japanese and Korean with a goal of supporting 40 languages in the near future.

As a creative and helpful collaborator, Bard can supercharge your imagination, boost your productivity, and help you bring your ideas to life—whether you want help planning the perfect birthday party and drafting the invitation, creating a pro & con list for a big decision, or understanding really complex topics simply.

Bard will soon become more visual in a couple of helpful ways. Bard will incorporate relevant images in its responses. It’ll also become easy for you to prompt Bard with images, giving you even more ways to explore and create.

Google Maps

Google Maps unveiled a new “Immersive View for Routes” feature in select cities. The new feature brings all of the information that a user may need into one place, including details about traffic simulations, bike lanes, complex intersections, parking and more. You can even see air quality, weather and traffic.

PaLM 2

PaLM – Pathways Language Model from Google, a 540-billion parameter, dense decoder-only Transformer model trained with the Pathways system. PaLM 2 will power Google’s updated Bard chat tool, the company’s competitor to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, and function as the foundation model for most of the new AI features the company is announcing today.

Sec-PaLM, introduced last month, is trained on security intelligence and powers new Google Cloud offerings that help organizations and security analysts detect, understand and defend against threats.

Med-PaLM 2 can help answer questions and summarize insights from a variety of dense medical texts.

Workspace

From the very beginning, Google Workspace was built for collaborating in real time with other people — and now you can also collaborate in real time with AI!

These new Workspace features can help you turn ideas into action. Simply describe what you’re trying to accomplish, and Google Sheets will generate a plan that helps you get organized.

New AI tools in can help you level up your Slides presentations. Simply pick a slide and use a simple text prompt to generate an original visual that conveys your unique artistic vision.

All of these new features are part of a powerful new way of working that Google is calling Duet AI for Google Workspace.

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!