So, shock / horror there will be people out there that have firends or family running different brands of mobile phone, the market being very much in the grip of Android or iPhone.

With the newer phones and more upto date software things like emoji’s are working, though sending photos and group chats…well…this requires all concerned to make sure that a feature call RCS for messages is turned on, without RCS on Andoids and iOS devices will not run a group chat the way you would expect, infact with it off, iOS will show messages in the chat whereas Andorid displays it at an individual level, ie you get messages sent to you from the person texting, rather than seeing it in a group.

Also VERY important, here in the UK ONLY these mobile phone providers currently support RCS, EE, BT, Three, Vodafone, O2 ( and also GiffGaff ) – Hopefully this list will increase!!

Once RCS is on, and the text group is correctly “talking” to all devices all is go, this should be automatic, and it should also apply to existing groups, though sometimes these do need to be remade.

This is still not perfect, as when I send a photo to someone on iOS from time to time I get the message that it failed due to network not being activated, But try again later and it goes!

Hope both Google and Apple will continue to support and develop RCS on their mobile devices, bringing friends and family back together in useful and fun group chats, rather than having to switch to third party options like Signal or some Meta based chat system