When will RCS be supported?

Update

https://www.phonearena.com/news/Googles-RCS-Chat-rolled-out-in-UK-and-France_id117775

Rollout of RCS messaging has been completed in UK and anyone with supported handset can use it. It is not carrier specific as Google will handle all themselves. Only drawback at this moment is lack of end to end encryption.

Hikari wrote:

Update

https://www.phonearena.com/news/Googles-RCS-Chat-rolled-out-in-UK-and-France_id117775

Rollout of RCS messaging has been completed in UK and anyone with supported handset can use it. It is not carrier specific as Google will handle all themselves. Only drawback at this moment is lack of end to end encryption.

In theory this should work on any handset in the UK, but I have observed that handsets that have had a temporary number before main telephone number was ported cannot finish set up to connect to Google servers, as the although the ported number works perfectly for the iDmobile network, the telephone itself does not know the correct number it has (and any information entered by the user is ignored).

It seems that this can be fixed with a "Network Refresh" which will update the information the telephone holds about it's own telephone number.

Can anyone confirm if they have successfully been able to request such a network refresh from iDmobile?

I have heard of people successfully managing this on the Three network, and then getting RCS to work.

(Both my parents have moved to iDmobile, and are now without RCS having previously had it via Vodafone)

Hi @hewbass,

We can certainly check this out and advise you in more detail.

Please could you confirm the make and models of the handsets that your parents are using?

Once we have this informtation we can look further into it.

Kash

Hello @Kash

Thanks for your response. They are both using Samsung A40 hand sets, with Google Messages (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.messaging) installed in order to try and use the Google deployed RCS/Chat service (https://9to5google.com/2019/07/27/google-messages-rcs-uk-france/). They have recently moved from Vodafone, where they had been using the Vodafone provided RCS service and would like to continue to use RCS.

The issue seems to be a bug in Google Messages, preventing it from being able to verify the devices own telephone number in the scenario where the SIM had a temporary number assigned before using a PAC to port another telephone number. I have been told that if the network provisions a network refresh this will resolve the issue.

Normally this would be something that we should expect Google to fix (but they seem to be a oblivious to this particular bug) but I expect the above scenario will affect other iDMobile customers who may be interested in using RCS.

Many thanks for your attention, and I hope you can resolve.

hewbass

Hey @hewbass

I have an idea to try but it will require accessing hidden menu. As a disclaimer I have tried it on my phone just to see if this will break my phone and it didn't but since I don't use RCS I don't know if it will fix the issue either but if you are willing to try I don't take responsibility for anything that may go wrong, either does iD Mobile. You can try these steps at your own risk.

Sorry for these corporate words, I just want to cover all bases in case something goes wrong when you decide to try it.

When you type *#*#46368676#*#* in your dialler. You should see hidden menu like on the screenshot below.

When you the you can try toggling "Mobile radio power" off and on. When you scroll to the bottom of that page you will see another buttons.

Maybe tapping at "trigger operator provisioning" will get it fixed.

As I mentioned before since I don't use RCS, nothing happened to my phone but hopefully it will help your issues.

Let us know if you decided to try it and what was the outcome? This solution in untested with RCS, I just came up with it while thinking how I could help you.

Kind Regards

Hello @Hikari

These are my parent's devices and I will not be with them for a couple of weeks, so I will probably leave them without RCS in preference to risk to their devices, but this is useful information I will try once we are together in the same place.

Thanks!

Hey @hewbass

I have run some test on new RCS feature using Google Messages app. So when you phone number has been ported and port is completed what you can do is.

# turn off rcs feature
# turn it back on
# tap on "retry" button as soon as it appears
# manually type your ported phone number

My number has been ported from giffgaff to iD and when I followed steps above and tested it by sending text to my gf who has RCS toggled on as well, my correct number displayed on her phone.

Worth the try, hopefully it will help.

Hi @Hikari

In the Chat Features settings did it ever get to saying "Connected"? RCS will automatically fall back to SMS if it can't connect via RCS (either because the sender can't connect to RCS or because the recipient can't) -- it's a lot like Apple iMessage in that respect.

I will suggest to my parents to try that though...

Thanks!