my RCS was broken for a few weeks (iOS 27b4 activation stuck bug, b5 fixed it) and I've noticed more conversations now appear as E2EE
I went through my contacts and roughly 1 in 5 contacts appear as E2EE now
none of the newly encrypted contacts are necessarily tech savvy, which means that Android x iOS E2EE is rolling out to stable GM
iOS has support for smaller non-partner networks via GSMA NSX (not 100% sure, don't quote me on that). These settings are stored in "OtherKnown.bundle" carrier bundle.
Some of these networks have gotten support for RCS in iOS 27.0 betas.
beta 1
Belgium
France
USA
beta 4
Canada
these networks are not currently available on my website, not sure when (and if) i'll be able to add them
non-partnered carriers have been added to http://cupboardunderscore.github.io/ios-rcs/
United States
Canada
Japan
India
Sweden
other carrier updates can be found here: http://cupboardunderscore.github.io/ios-rcs/
first 3 screenshots iOS 27
last 3 screenshots iOS 26.5
Home Assistant (another smart home platform) shows around 22W power usage on this socket, so not sure where the ~40W come from
Apple Messages currently use "hybrid" group chats for group chats consisting of at least two iMessage users and at least one MMS/RCS user. This lets iMessage users benefit from extra features: replies, proper message reaction (instead of relying on a fallback method), editing messages, etc. (most of these are already part of RCS, but in a newer version than Apple uses) and sends fallback variants to non iMessage users.
This way, iMessage users in "hybrid" group chats already have access to message replies, but these replies work differently than RCS replies.
Google Messages (RCS) use single message replies, each reply is attached to a single message
Apple Messages (iMessage) use thread replies, each reply is attached to a chain of messages
For 1 on 1 RCS messages (and group chats with only one iMessage user) Apple will probably limit replies to single message replies without putting them in a thread, but how will Apple (or Google) handle replies in mixed group chats?
Will Apple "downgrade" their "hybrid" group chats to use single message replies?
Will Google add support for thread replies to Google Messages?
Will neither of them do anything and will replies be confusing in mixed group chats?
(Will Apple just never add replies to their RCS implementation?)
I guess we will see what Apple decides to do (or not do) in a few weeks at WWDC26, where they will announce iOS 27
