A significant milestone was reached this morning when Google announced that 1 billion RCS users had joined Google Messages. More RCS users will be added shortly. Before we continue, let's give ourselves a collective high five for continuing to support RCS over the years—the first time it was discussed on Droid Life was in 2016.
Google is revealing a number of new features to commemorate this milestone, all aimed at improving the RCS messaging experience for users. There are Voice Moods and Photomoji, which use on-device AI to transform any photo on your phone into a reaction. You can add an expression to your voice messages by using this feature.
With the new Screen Effects, users can activate a unique animation by simply typing special phrases like "I love you" or "it's snowing." Google is posing a challenge to users to locate all 15+ hidden Screen Effects. Messages is also adding Custom Bubbles, which lets users personalize their entire chat screen, just like other messaging apps. This implies that the focus is no longer solely on green and blue bubbles. Your friend's bubble color will no longer be discernible to you.
Animated Emoji and Reaction Effects are also available. When responding to a friend's message, Reaction Effects will add even more immersion, and Animated Emoji will enhance the visuals when sending emoji-only messages. It is comparable to the animated emoji feature on Telegram.
The Messages beta is currently rolling out all of these features. You can sign up for that here if you haven't already.
