Google Would Love to Bring RCS to Your Phone, but US Carriers are Bad July 28, 2019 https://www.droid-life.com/2019/07/...ng-rcs-to-your-phone-but-us-carriers-are-bad/
Google will begin pushing RCS messaging to all Android users in the U.S. today November 14, 2019 https://www.phonedog.com/2019/11/14/google-rcs-messages-android-us-rollout Google: Upgrading messaging on Android in the U.S. with RCS
RCS is an upgrade to the SMS system which is ancient. If you use the default messaging app on android you'll be using it soon without knowing it.
I do use the default messaging app. Will that be replaced with the Messages app? I've never used any of Google previous messaging apps wither.
Even if you use another messaging app you'll end up using RCS because this comes from the carriers and every messaging app will update to this sooner rather than later. I don't know if US carriers (most of the rest of the world has apparently) has upgraded their back ends to support this yet (they have all agreed to do so) or whether as of right now Google is sending everything through their own back end to make it work for now. It's more like imessaging capability wise where you can send media as a message and will work with iphones also whereas imessaging doesn't work with android. For me this isn't very exciting but for people that live for texting its huge.
RCS messaging on Android? Free me from my Google messaging mess first Commentary: Google's new Messages app is a throwback locked to a single phone and laptop November 17, 2019 https://www.cnet.com/news/rcs-messaging-on-android-free-me-from-my-google-messaging-mess-first/
Google says all U.S. users should now have RCS enabled You'll need to update both Google Messages and Carrier Services for the change to take effect December 13, 2019 https://www.androidcentral.com/google-says-all-us-users-should-now-have-rcs-enabled