There are only a few days left in 2023, so it’s time to prepare congratulations for the next year. Congratulating on WhatsApp is very popular and the application usually crashes at the most inopportune moment: be more original and congratulate the new year with Google Messages.
Sending your wishes for the coming year by SMS is, thanks to the magic of RCS, both classic and modern. It arrives like an ordinary SMS, although technically it is more like sending a WhatsApp and has the same cost: none.
SMS or RCS
SMS is the traditional text messages and also what we used ten years ago to congratulate our family and friends on the New Year when we did it through a call. RCS is an evolution of text messages that Google has been trying to make it the new standard for years. After much prodding, Apple has also decided to jump on the bandwagon to improve interoperability between iMessage and Android users.
The RCS standard is by no means new and for years it was known as “the WhatsApp of operators”. The idea is essentially to reproduce the experience in applications such as WhatsApp, Messenger or Telegram but in a standard way that does not depend on a specific application. The path of RCS to our mobile phones has been a small journey in the desert, with a somewhat slow implementation on the part of the operators which pushed Google to decide to act on the subject, activating it for all the users.
Sending messages via RCS is free, since this is done via the Internet (so we will need Wi-Fi or a data plan). On the other hand, it is common that SMS continues to be charged per message among many operators, in addition to being an obsolete technology that limits the number of characters, is not encrypted and does not have functions of modern messaging such as writing indicators.
A chat with RCS which will be free (on the left) and another with lifetime SMS which we will have to pay for (depending on the package)
To send an RCS message to someone, to you and the other person you must have active RCS messages. You’ll see if this is the case by starting a new conversation in Google Messages. If yes, you will see Cat RCS; otherwise it will be read sending a text message, which is a lifetime text message and will probably cost you money on your phone bill.
Still no RCS?
As we mentioned before, Google eventually got tired of waiting for carriers to enable support for RCS messages, so they decided to ignore them and implement it themselves. Today there is users who have RCS enabled by their carrier and others who have it through Google.
If you want to check if RCS is active on your mobile, you need to open the Google Messages app (if you don’t have it installed, you can download it from Google Play) and tap on your profile picture to view the menu. In it, press Message settings.
Enter the first section, Generalthen press Cat RCSwhich was formerly called Chat Features. If your mobile is compatible (and it generally is), you can activate RCS messaging with Enable RCS chats. Just below it is indicated to which number the activation applies, in case you have a mobile phone with several SIM cards.
Write and plan your message
Welcoming the New Year with Google Messages has the advantage of It will reach the other person as a text message, but you can write by adding all kinds of multimedia elements such as photos, stickers, videos, animated GIFs or emojis. The congratulations surely stand out more than buried in a sea of WhatsApp messages.
However, Best of all, you can schedule the message, so you won’t have to start writing while you’re choking on grapes. To do this, simply hold down the send button after dialing it, and the context menu will appear.
In this menu, choose Scheduled Shipping and you can then choose precisely when you want the message to be sent. Keep in mind that it is the cell phone itself that takes care of the programming, so it will have to be turned on and connected to the Internet for the sending to take place.
Press on Choose a time and date and you can then choose precisely the day and time you want the message to be sent. Press to safeguard and now you don’t have to worry about it anymore: your New Year’s greetings will arrive at their destination at the right time, even if you prepared them a few days before.
After scheduling a message, you can see it in chat with that person in Google Messages in a drop-down section titled Scheduled message. From there you can edit it, delete it or send it manually whenever you want.
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