How to temporarily fix the RCS question mark bug that iOS 18 beta users are talking about
Now that iOS 18 Beta 2 has been distributed by Apple, iPhone users have been able to support RCS messaging which means that finally iOS and Android users can enjoy a high-resolution image sent by one to the other. They also receive read receipts (although this has been missing from iPhone users in a group chat with Android users along with end-to-end encryption, and emoji reactions).
While some features are missing from the RCS support thus far, something strange has been added to messages between iOS and Android users on RCS: Question marks. On some texts sent using RCS from iPhone users to Android users, question marks are appearing where they are not supposed to appear in a message. Check out this post from one social media user explaining the situation. "My husband has a Google Pixel and all of my spaces and letter d's are question marks this morning." Another post states, "Happening with me and one of my friends, but not another. They both have iPhones and i have Android."
Another person writes, "Ugh this is happening to me, I have iPhone and my husband is on a Samsung how do we fix it it’s so annoying." And yet another typed, "I have a Samsung Note S20 Ultra 5G that is running the latest version of Android and is fully updated. For some reason, when I receive text messages from iPhone users, spaces, commas, etc all appear as question marks."
Question marks appear in strange places on iPhone messages sent via RCS to Android users|Image credit-Android Police
This issue has been contained for now to those signed up with Canadian carriers such as Bell, Telus, and Rogers. We are going to give you one workaround that has worked for some iPhone users. If you add a special character to your message like an emoji or an "&," your RCS message has a better chance of arriving on the screen of an Android device exactly as you typed it. To make it clear, this weird issue seems to be limited to those on Canadian wireless providers.
Forgetting the strange question marks, which could be the fault of a Canadian carrier, there is some good news here. The missing RCS features are appearing on a beta release of iOS 18 which means that those affected by it should be used to some apps and features not working as expected. Since we are only on the second iOS 18 beta, we have a way to go before the stable version of iOS 18 is released giving Apple plenty of time to make RCS support flawless for the vast majority of iPhone users.
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