Textra SMS to include RCS support next year for advanced messaging

The Textra SMS app developer has confirmed that RCS support will arrive in 2017. Responding to a question on Twitter, the developer said carriers likely wouldn’t have the technology online until midway through next year, and noted that specs for it haven’t yet been released.

Rich Communication Services, or RCS for short, is an upcoming messaging standard which would succeed SMS and MMS. As well as regular text messaging, RCS would support high quality picture messages (up to 10 MB), location sharing, group chat, video calls and more.

Textra SMS is a messaging app which seeks to provide advanced features for SMS conversations, delivering GIFs, stop-during-send, multi-select picture galleries, and a number of theme options.

As both the RCS standard and Textra SMS are seeking to increase the possibilities of network messaging, it seems inevitable that Textra SMS would integrate it at some interval.

RCS has already rolled out with a few carriers and services – Google Messenger recently integrated it – but it’s yet to become unified across all networks (T-Mobile’s RCS service can’t be used with AT&T’s, for example). Until this happens, it probably won’t be seen in Textra.

Find out what you need to know about RCS in our dedicated article.