It was a long wait, but iPhone users finally jumped onto the RCS bandwagon with the release of iOS 18 in September this year. RCS allows iPhone users to seamlessly text Android users with high-quality media, text reactions, richer group chats, and more. But it's not all sunshine and rainbows for RCS, as there remains a big caveat when Android users send an RCS message to iPhone users, which is the lack of encryption.

Samsung shared a press note on how it worked with Google to accelerate RCS adoption. The press note reiterates much of what we already know, but the fine print at the bottom of it caught our attention more than anything else.

As Samsung highlights again, encryption in RCS messages is only available when Android users chat with each other through Google Messages. If Android users chat with iPhone users through RCS, either through DMs or group chats, then the conversation is not encrypted. When iPhone users chat with each other, they skip RCS and adopt iMessage instead, which is also encrypted.