iOS 27 brings small but welcome upgrades to how the iPhone texts Android. | Image by PhoneArena
Apple's iOS 27 developer beta 2 quietly added two RCS upgrades for iPhone and Android texting. iPhone users can now reply to a single message in a thread, and emoji reactions finally show up properly on the Android side instead of a clunky text line. The Galaxy S26 Ultra we reviewed gets the smoother chat once a friend's iPhone 17 Pro Max updates, like any of the best Android phones.
iPhone texting just picked up two RCS tricks Android already had
Both showed up in iOS 27 developer beta 2, which Apple pushed out in late June. The first lets you reply to one specific message in a thread, the way iMessage already does, by long-pressing it and choosing Reply.
A new report shared the first images. The second change cleans up reactions, which now sit on the message itself on Android instead of a separate "so-and-so loved an image" line.
iOS 27 beta 2 adds a Reply option to the long-press menu, so you can answer one specific message in an RCS chat. | Image by MacRumors
Beta tester Aaron confirmed on X that image reactions show up correctly too, and we'd flagged inline replies as the piece still missing from Apple's RCS.
How do you handle texting between iPhone and Android?
The EU started this, but Apple is rolling it out everywhere
If you're on a Galaxy S26 Ultra or any Android phone, this asks nothing of you. The replies and reactions appear once your iPhone contact moves to iOS 27. To Apple's credit, the fix isn't region-locked like Siri AI is in the EU, even though regulators forced RCS onto the iPhone.
Who gets this, and when
The people who notice most are those in mixed group chats, where a reply to a question three messages back used to float with no context.
There's a catch on timing, though. It only lives in the buggy iOS 27 beta for now, so most people will get it with the stable release in September, when RCS is on and the carrier supports it.
These are small wins, and I'll take them
None of this is the most exciting part of iOS 27. But cross-platform texting has been quietly annoying for years, and the small fixes that cut friction are the ones I appreciate day to day.
What I like most is that Apple isn't limiting these niceties to the regions that forced its hand. It didn't have to keep refining cross-platform chats, yet it does. I'd personally love to see message editing and unsending next, still the obvious gaps.
I post hot takes and behind-the-scenes bits on X and Threads, so come say hi @jojothetechie.
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Johanna Romero is a Senior News Writer at PhoneArena, covering mobile technology news across Android, iOS, wearables, and the Google ecosystem she knows best. Drawing on 15 years in IT and tech support from 2007 to 2022, she brings a user-friendly eye for the practical features and lesser-known tricks readers care about. Google named her an official #TeamPixel member in 2022, and she also reviews the latest devices on her YouTube channel, JoJo the Techie.
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