Google Messages has been the default messaging app on Samsung phones for more than a year now. While you can still use Samsung Messages on your Galaxy device without issues (at least for now), you ought to switch to Google Messages. Here’s why.
Even Samsung doesn’t want you using Samsung Messages anymore
Unless you manually set Samsung Messages to be the default messaging app on your Samsung Galaxy phone, you will be greeted with the following full-screen notification when you open the Samsung Messages app:
In a nutshell, Samsung is telling people who use its phones to switch to Google Messages. If even the company that makes the app advises you to switch, there’s probably sound reasoning behind it, right? But what exactly does this mean, and why should you switch to Google Messages? It all boils down to RCS.
The reason? RCS
The primary reason Samsung decided to replace its messaging app with Google Messages has to do with the implementation of the RCS (Rich Communication Service) standard. RCS is the successor to SMS (Short Messaging Service), bringing a number of improvements over SMS.
In a nutshell, RCS works with any phone number and supports functionalities found in instant messenger apps such as WhatsApp. You have read receipts and type indicators, can share photos and videos in their full quality, respond with emojis, can create group chats, your chats with other people are end-to-end encrypted, and more.
iPhones also support RCS, but iOS lacks certain RCS features, most notably end-to-end encryption. Apple has been promising it will implement RCS end-to-end encryption “soon” since mid-March 2025. However, as of writing this, there’s still no exact info about when iPhone owners will get the feature. RCS end-to-end encryption should come with one of the upcoming iOS 26 updates, but no one aside from Apple knows which one.
Anyway, Google has been at the forefront of RCS implementation for years, promoting RCS and even publicly pressuring Apple (along with the EU) to start supporting RCS on iPhones, which finally happened in 2024. The Google Messages app has supported RCS for years now, regardless of your carrier or which Android phone you’re using, since it relies on Google’s Jibe RCS backhaul network instead of individual carrier support.
On the flip side, the situation with RCS support in Samsung Messages is muddy, to say the least. For a few years, Samsung Messages hadn’t supported RCS, then it did, then Samsung made its app’s RCS feature compatible with Google’s messaging app. Then, in mid-2024, Samsung decided to make Google Messages the default messaging app on Galaxy phones and sunset its own messaging app. In early 2025, Samsung Messages dropped RCS support on some U.S. carriers.
However, for some reason, also in early 2025, the company pushed a Samsung Messages update that brought back RCS support. But there’s a catch.
In order to be able to use RCS on Samsung Messages, your carrier has to support it. If it doesn’t, you’ll be reverted to the SMS standard when using Samsung Messages. On the other hand, RCS is always active in Google Messages since it uses Google’s own Jibe RCS network, thus enabling RCS support even when a carrier doesn’t offer its own RCS solution.
The catch is that all three major U.S. carriers are using Google Jibe, not their own RCS solutions. This means that RCS shouldn’t work at all on Samsung Messages if you’re in the U.S. In reality, even though U.S. carriers use Google Jibe, some offer RCS support on Samsung Messages while others don’t, and the whole situation’s very convoluted. Things aren’t better on the iPhone, either.
This is why Samsung is pushing its phone owners towards Google Messages. By making Google Messages the default messaging platform on Galaxy phones, Samsung guarantees RCS access for all its phone owners—no matter if their carrier doesn’t support RCS, runs its own RCS network, or relies on Google’s Jibe network.
By switching its phones to Google Messages, the company also doesn’t have to worry about updating its own app to implement eventual future RCS updates.
Newer Galaxy Phones only include Google Messages
Samsung went so far in promoting Google Messages that it flat-out stopped bundling Samsung Messages on newer Galaxy phones starting with the Galaxy Z Flip 6 and Galaxy Z Fold 6. You can still install Samsung Messages from the Galaxy Store, but the app isn’t preinstalled on the Galaxy Z Flip 6, Galaxy Z Fold 6, or the Galaxy S25 series.
Instead, you’re greeted with Google Messages, which has been the default messaging option on Samsung phones for a while now. Whether that’s a good thing or not is up for debate, but the fact of the matter is that Samsung Messages is effectively sunsetted, despite receiving a surprise RCS update in early 2025.
This means it should no longer receive updates after that RCS one. Without updates, the app has become a security risk and might become unusable on future versions of Android.
If Samsung itself sunsetted its messaging app and stopped including it on its phones, if the company is actively promoting Google Messages over Samsung Messages, and if you cannot use RCS with Samsung Messages if your carrier doesn’t support RCS, it might be a good idea to stop using Samsung Messages altogether.
While this is clearly a bad thing for the promise of choice and competition on Android, it’s better to switch to an actively developed app than keep using one that’s officially dead.
Google Messages is the default messaging app on a bunch of Android phones
Google Messages has been the default messaging app on many Android phones for years now. It originally debuted under a different name (Messenger) as the default SMS app on Nexus devices in 2014. Nowadays, it’s more or less the default on most Android devices that come preinstalled with Google apps. While you can use other messaging apps on Android, such as Textra or Microsoft SMS Organizer, they don’t support RCS.
While this means that Google kind of holds a monopoly over messaging apps on Android, at least you’ve got access to a regularly updated messaging app that supports a feature-rich messaging standard, including end-to-end encryption.
Besides, all three major carriers in the US, as well as many carriers around the world, are using Google’s Jibe network. In other words, you can’t really avoid your chats going through Google’s servers if you’re using RCS unless your carrier has its own RCS backhaul network.
Samsung Messages had been the standard on Samsung phones for years, but its flaky RCS support was always an issue. Now that Samsung has pulled the plug on its messaging app in favor of Google Messages, you ought to switch to Google Messages to be able to use RCS regardless of whether your carrier has its own RCS implementation.
Samsung Messages being dead and gone also means it stopped receiving updates—including security updates. In other words, using the app is now a security risk. The lack of updates also means it’s likely the app will stop working altogether at some point, so it’s best to move on from it sooner rather than later.