Why you won't have the new SMS from Orange for a while

Already available from SFR and soon from Free and Bouygues Telecom, RCS messages will have to be patient for Orange subscribers.

Although activated since the summer of 2024 on the iOS 18 beta, and now officially available, the RCS will not arrive before “the first half of 2025” at Orange, our colleagues at MacGeneration have learned.

A delay which does not pass for the subscribers of the historical operator, who for their part cite the need to have “all the conditions of customer experience”, even though the RCS is already offered at SFR, and will be with iOS 18.2 from Free Mobile and Bouygues Telecom.

The end of traditional SMS

RCS is an important feature. Thanks to it, SMS exchanges are significantly improved, since you can react to messages, have a preview of web pages, or even see if the recipient has seen a sent message. Until now, Apple was resisting this technology pushed by Google, protecting iMessage, which offered the same thing.

But with iOS 18, Apple has taken a step forward, even if the manufacturer is content to manage basic RCS, and does not offer encryption of exchanges – unlike Android, or iMessage.

If this does not remove the principle of green bubbles and blue bubbles on iOS (the green ones being exchanges with an Android smartphone, the blue ones with an iPhone), the RCS at least allows you to benefit from additional functionalities like those that we can have on Whatsapp or Messenger.

But RCS activation is not automatic. If SFR took advantage of the iOS 18 beta distributed this summer to ensure compatibility, the other operators have fallen a little behind. The operator update will therefore take place at the same time as iOS 18.2 (the release of which is scheduled for November 2024) for Free Mobile and Bouygues Telecom. Orange customers will have to wait a few more months.