The point is to access an e2ee protocol bundled by default on many devices, and is cross-platform.

GrapheneOS does recommend using superior platforms like Signal, but that is 3rd party, and thus has adoptability issues in convincing people to use it. Just because better platforms exist does not mean RCS should be ignored.

The point of the exercise is for Google and Apple to maintain control over the ecosystem.

RCS is technically superior (protocol, transport, security, all of it) but is captured from the start on the technical level by design by the big players. From the perspective of the vast majority of users who have very limited technical awareness, it was silently slipped in as an upgrade at one point or another. This means that those not adopting the proprietary BigTech solution are perceived as being difficult by insisting on using software that's now perceived as outdated or as otherwise mildly incompatible.

RCS was DOA from day one as far as I'm concerned. The carriers being involved in any capacity deeper than providing dumb pipes alone was enough to make it pointless, but no E2E in the base spec makes it extra pointless. They may as well have just extended SMS to be more capable, because that's what they've effectively created.

From [0], it seems that RCS can use the cellular signal instead of LTE or 5G:

> In cases where RCS is able to operate over cellular networks without data, it supports messaging as well as file transfer, enriched calling, and more.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Communication_Services

RCS allows higher resolution pictures than MMS.

Their license is invalid due to being GPLv3. GPLv3 cannot be included in GrapheneOS as that would necessitate GrapheneOS give up their permissive licensing.

Refra Gallery is licensed as Apache 2.0, which is a permissive license GrapheneOS can bundle in the OS.

After getting several family group chats finally converted over to RCS, one day my phone just started absolutely refusing to verify my connection to the RCS servers. Instead of any kind of notification, I was just silently not sending or receiving messages for nearly an entire day. I had to disable RCS on my phone, which created a several day long issue where some chats would just fall back to SMS and others absolutely refused to work, or strange interactions with Apple devices where certain messages would not be displayed. After enough trouble with it I convinced everyone to switch to a third party messaging app. I'll never turn RCS on again, I can't trust that it won't just start silently failing.

The main benefit of RCS is the fact it is available by default on other platforms like certified android and IOS. 3rd party messaging apps hit adoptability issues. A bundled, cross platform E2EE protocol is a huge step above SMS and MMS.

Many 3rd party platforms are still better though.

It's a bandaid over iMessage's dominance among iOS users.

The only benefit is sending higher DPI pictures between android and ios