Yeah. I don't really think it's better either. I just think it'll fall flat on its face like Google's many many previous attempts at messaging unless they actually tell people it exists.
RCS is federated in a way (between service providers, you can't easily self-host this stuff). The unencrypted protocol is also open.
In practice, nobody but spammers cares about RCS. Google wrapped the whole thing into a "you won't get shamed by iOS users anymore if Apple would just pick this up" envelope to gain support, but I don't think that many Android users are using SMS/RCS for their messaging anyway.
Google's RCS has 800M active users and it's projected to hit 1B by the end of the year matching iMessage's usage. Whether people actually know that it's RCS or not, it's been a pretty successful service for Google so far.
RCS done properly would be nice. I'd very much like to not be sending my messages through meta. Google's implementation, however, just trades one American giant for another.
With an app it is just me, the app and whatever internet connection I have.
With SMS&co instead I have to deal with a system outside that, managed by the phone company and whatever.
Also apps are constantly updated, RCS standard will just become SMS2.
Even iPhone users use an app in USA, it is only USA android users that for some random reasons are still stuck to SMS.
Here I just open telegram or whatsapp and message with anyone, no matter the phone. Or discord, or Matrix...
True. But the for the last part, but the argument for RCS is the same. But more so. You'd know you could just message them using it and you wouldn't need to know if they were using WhatsApp discord. No matter what their phone would have RCS, or would fall back to SMS.
I'm European and I pretty much only use SMS with family members and such.
It always works! But pretty much everyone in my extended family uses an iPhone which is annoying when I want to send or receive big media files. So it would be very nice if iOS started to support RCS messaging
I primarily use Discord with friends.
I don't think I have ever met one that uses signal or Telegram regularly.
The only ones I know that use whatsapp are my parents.
Old people mostly use Facebook messenger or maybe whatsapp I believe.