Talk about an emotional rollercoaster! Recently, Samsung gave us the news that it would be getting rid of one of its oldest apps, Samsung Messages. In its stead, Galaxy users would have Google Messages out of the box. Be that as it may, Samsung Messages just got RCS support.
This is a pretty odd development. While many app developers have shed their first-party services in lieu of Google’s apps over the years, Samsung has pretty much maintained its own ecosystem of apps. This is why the news that Samsung was sunsetting Samsung Messages was a shocker. However, it makes sense, as Google Messages has become a pretty big messaging platform.
For some reason, Samsung Messages received RCS
While the company put its messaging app in the grave, it seems that Samsung isn’t done with it. As discovered by Sammy Guru, phones running One UI 7 seem to be able to send and receive RCS messages. Users would see a banner pop up when they opened the app. It would read “Faster, richer, higher quality chat on Wi-Fi or data”. Under that, we’d see the typical “Read the terms of service” spiel starting with the text “To turn on RCS chats from Google…” Under the banner, you have the option to either enable RCS or go on without it.
Interestingly enough, users were only able to see this on the Galaxy S25 running One UI 7. They were not able to see it when using the latest One UI 7 beta on the Galaxy S24. Since Samsung Messages doesn’t come pre-installed on the Galaxy S25 phones, users will need to install it from the Galaxy Store (version v15.7.02.15). Users were able to send and receive RCS messages using Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T.
So, at this point, we don’t know if Samsung will distribute this to older phones using Samsung Messages. Also, we don’t know why Samsung decided to bring this functionality to its dying messaging app. Could the company be planning to bring it back? There’s no telling at this point.
