iOS 17 makes iMessage group chats with Android users more bearable – sort of

If it wasn’t made clear throughout Google’s “Get the Message” marketing campaign final summer time, the corporate positive hoped {that a} fast jab throughout its latest I/O convention signaled to Apple that RCS is kind of presumably the one resolution to a more unified communication system throughout iOS and Android platforms. 

Also: 5 helpful iOS 17 options Apple quietly launched at WWDC 2023

In what might be interpreted as a response, Apple has unveiled a brand new change coming to iMessage in its upcoming iOS 17 model, slated for a fall season launch. This change supplies a more bearable expertise when iPhone users are texting in the identical dialog as Android users.

Previously, iMessage group chats with Android users, who’re marked with inexperienced bubbles, would limit iPhone users from accessing key options like thread responses, enhancing texts, and more. Photo and video uploads have been more compressed than regular, too. 

In iOS 17, group chats will now unlock these restricted options for the iPhone, permitting users to speak and work together with Android users like how they might in an iPhone-solely chat. It’s not RCS, however, hopefully, this reduces the possibilities of that one Android person from being ostracized from social teams. It’s an actual drawback.

Also: How to ship and obtain iMessages on Windows

Here’s the catch: Changes like edited textual content messages and threads do not seem — or not within the correct order, no less than — within the Messages app on Android. That signifies that if a person on an iPhone fixes a typo for when or the place a hangout is occurring, Android users within the chat will not see the replace.

Ultimately, the “improvements” dropped at iMessage group chats in iOS 17 profit iPhone users solely. And, in some methods, they damage the textual content messaging expertise for Android users even more.