(Pocket-lint) – In its push to make SMS conversions feature-rich, regardless of who you’re messaging, Google has now started rolling out an update to its Messages app that allows you to see iMessage / iOS message reactions.
The feature is being pushed out from today to anyone with their language set to English, and will mean that when an iPhone user reacts to a message you have sent, you’ll actually see a little rection emoji rather than text telling you they have reacted .
This should help group messages including people using both Android and iOS a little more seamless, although it won’t do anything about green bubbles appearing on the iPhone user’s screen when you send a message.
This is just one of the new features being pushed to the Messages app. Another is sharing higher quality photos and videos with other users, regardless of whether they have RCS on their phone or not (iPhone users).
Rather than send a huge file over MMS, the updated functionality will mean you send a Google Photos link to an image or a video, and that way anyone – regardless of whether they have RCS or not – can see it in high quality.
Of course, in its blog post announcement of these new features, Google couldn’t resist but take a pop at Apple, encouraging it to adopt RCS, so that everyone can chat with each other and react to messages, without the need for all these additional workarounds that Google has developed.
Other new features include the ability of Messages to automatically sort personal and business contacts into separate tabs, keeping conversations with friends separate from updates like delivery notifications, or automated messages from your doctor, optician, airline etc.
Messages is also adding automatic reminders for birthday messages.
All of these updates are being rolled out to Messages over the coming weeks, so keep an eye out for those changes next time your chatting with your iPhone (or any) friends.
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Writing by Cam Bunton.
