Some Galaxy users are experiencing a problem as their chats switch from RCS to old-school SMS

Rich Communication Services (RCS) allows Android users messaging to other Android users over the RCS platform to enjoy many of the fabulous features that Apple offers to those chatting with iMessage. Those features include end-to-end encryption, read receipts, typing indicators, high-quality image sharing, the ability to type longer messages, and more. Later this year, Apple will add RCS support to the iPhone allowing iPhone users chatting with an Android user to enjoy the aforementioned features.

According to SamMobile, some Galaxy phone users are having issues using RCS. Over at Reddit, some Android phone owners have noticed that chats with a few Samsung device users are switching between RCS and old-school SMS texts. As one Redditor with the user name atehrani wrote, "I use Google Messages and [with] friends who use Samsung Messages, sometimes I'll get RCS and sometimes it will switch me to SMS." This is important because once the chat switches to SMS, those fabulous features we discussed will disappear.

Another Reddit user, grizzlyactual, said, "Now that you mention it, I'm noticing the people whose chats constantly switch between RCS and SMS have Samsung phones." And yet another Reddit user, KirsUkh0sm41gh1989, posted, "Well, honestly, it has happened to me that sometimes my contacts who also use Samsung stop showing the RCS mark and can't receive any RCS message, but after a few days it works again tho. The rest of my contacts receive RCS without issues."

We can understand how annoying this could be. Eventually we could see an update released that solves this issue. So far though, neither Samsung nor Google has commented on this problem. It's situations like this that turn Android users toward third-party messaging apps like WhatsApp.

The best and easiest solution would be for those with a Samsung Galaxy handset to install the RCS-powered Google Messages app and make that their default messaging app replacing Samsung Messages. To install Google Messages on your Galaxy phone, tap on this link.