Why is RCS not working between my iPhone running iOS 18 and Android?

i've only gotten 2 out of 3 of my android contacts to use RCS. the 2 i’ve gotten to work are Samsung Galaxy S22’s but the one that won’t work is on (i think) a Samsung Galaxy A53. i’m on Verizon btw.

Just got iPhone 16 RCS does not work on this phone keeps saying waiting activation

I think ur right. I have Verizon & I think it’s a Verizon thing. I have a couple Android contacts that RCS works with, but RCS isn’t working with most of my Android contacts.

Mine had stopped working properly but after I did a network reset on my iPhone it’s been working.

lkrupp wrote:

And of course Apple will NEVER use Google’s servers.

Probably because it would be illegal for Apple to do so.

amp68 wrote:

They'd just need to ask Google for permission. Google might say yes.

And both companies would then be sued by the EU and the US FTC for monopolistic practices. Great idea.

I think it's malicious compliance on Apple's part. They're following the RCS spec to the letter. And I don't think the spec says to fall back to SMS and resend if RCS fails.

If you go into the settings and reset the network settings under General, it will fix the RCS issue. I had the same issue and that fixed it for me

Not true. I have multiple text threads with android users that are working just fine. Only one has an issue sending RCS messages.

I have it on my phone. It's still in RCS. It's going to take some time to see whether there is a fix in there though. I can go a few days with it working before it switches back to SMS.

This worked for me, thank you for the idea!

I solved it by updating my Mac to Sequoia. Weirdly enough, this made my iPhone behave properly.

The carrier you have may make a difference, but I have iPhone 11 with T-Mobile and am on iOS 18. My messages with android users kept switching between SMS/RCS and I couldn’t figure out why. I did one of the steps someone else suggested which was to tap on the carrier option in the settings to change it to say SMS RCS but I don’t think that does anything because I restarted my phone and it went back to say T-Mobile until I tapped it again. I think it’s just for informational purposes. The fix is to go into messages and turn off “send as text message” and then be sure to turn on RCS. This will eliminate the switching and will now only send messages as RCS to android users. The only issue I can see happening with this is being turned off means when iMessage is not available to send to another iPhone, the message will not automatically be sent as SMS and will delay your message to be sent until iMessage is available again. Unless you go back to the settings and temporarily turn “send as text message” back on. See attached images. I hope this helps.

It is happening to me as well. I am using an iPhone 13 Pro Max on T-Mobile. As soon as I have updated to iOS 18 the RCS toggle is on but I am only allowed to send SMS messages to Android devices. The culprit for this issue is under carrier in thee settings, it is not showing that RCS messages are allowed.

The solutions of restarting my device has not fixed it. I may try to do a reset of network settings but before I did that I contacted T-Mobile to see if there is another solution. So far they were not helpful at all and the customer care rep was not knowledgeable about RCS. it is possibly the time of day I called.

I'm short, Incould be a sim issue or it is a bug on the software.

KaeBFly wrote:

Works fine on my iPhone 15 Pro Max on both the Verizon line and T-Mobile line. You may need to contact Verizon to make sure there isn’t a provision on their end that needs to be enabled or if you have to have specific plans (sometimes older grandfathered plans may be excluded from some features).

Good to know. I just verified this on my phone. Given that the link VP provided (and I read) about RCS only being available on Samsung phones, I wonder if the part about carrier interoperability is also wrong.