Chat: A high-end Android device can cost over a thousand dollars. For this money, you can have a phone with amazing features. A high-resolution screen, a top-notch camera, massive amounts of RAM, lots of storage, and an absolutely miserable texting experience.
This is of course a problem. In fact, it's always been a problem. Google has spent the last nearly decade trying and failing to solve the equation. During this time many applications were released that soon stopped supporting them. IPhone users have had the simplicity of iMessage built-in, but Android users have been left to fend for themselves looking for an app from the Store.
Today the company announced something completely different. Instead of developing a new application with dubious luck and lifespan, he is trying to completely change the rules of text messaging world-wide.
Google has contacted every major mobile operator on the planet to adopt a technology that will replace SMS. It will be called “Chat” and will be based on a standard called “Universal Profile for Rich Communication Services”. SMS is the default app, everyone has it, few use it, but everyone comes back to it at some point.
This is Google's goal: Make the default text messaging experience on Android as good as it does not need SMS.
So Google once again states that it stops with the development of Allo (another one bites the dust). It is the kind of "pause" that involves transferring almost the entire team outside the project and placing all the resources in another Android messaging application.
Google will not build the iMessage clone, but it will likely force mobile providers to do it for them. In order for the company to win, it first had to admit defeat.
What will be the chat?
Chat won't be a new texting app. Think of it more like a new set of features inside an app that is installed on most phones Android.
"Chat" is the friendly name of Rich Communication Services (RCS), the new template designed to replace SMS, and will be automatically activated in Android Messages, Google's default text messaging app.
When users start using the conversation, they will have many features that are already standard in any other text messaging application: reader testimonials, keystrokes, full resolution images and videos, and group conversations.
But the best thing is that service Chat will be available from mobile operators and not from Google. The company by creating a new standard ensures that chat services from each operator will be interoperable. But like SMS, conversations won't be end-to-end encrypted, in other words: they won't be as safeas much as iMessage or Signal.
New messaging services will be triggered by most Android users in the future, although the schedule will be dictated by each carrier. Google is optimistic that many mobile service providers will implement the new technology this year, but there could be some delays.
Messages will be sent via data instead of a program that measures SMS, so you will probably only be charged for the (minimum) data that costs sending a message. Though, again, it will depend on the mobile providers.
