As hundreds of millions of iPhone users update their devices to iOS 18, coloring their home screens and navigating the new Photos app, the reality is that this update is more about what’s missing than what’s been released. No Apple intelligence – at least not yet, and another glaring omission that’s also been confirmed.

This bad news concerns RCS – the biggest non-AI update that comes with iOS 18 and for the first time offers extensive messaging features for the standard messaging from iPhone to Android, but which The Washington Post warns that “chatting with Android friends still leaves security and other compromises that Apple could have avoided.”

The excitement is still high since the new SMS update v2 went live. “We knew it was coming for almost a year, but today is the day we have been waiting for,” Android Police says. “The SMS situation between the default messaging apps for Android and iPhone is going to be improved tremendously… Now that Apple has made iOS 18 official, iPhones can finally use the protocol that is supposed to replace SMS and MMS.”

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But these annoying green bubbles remain; this is not a panacea. “The drama has been going on for so long,” Gizmodo says “we need to recognize the little things that add up to a better SMS experience.” That includes typing ellipsises, read receipts, and sharing images that aren’t blurry. But with “growing pains” that often seem to depend on the generation of Android phones used to send messages, network conditions, and the seamless cross-platform experience we’ve come to expect from other apps.

But the more serious problem remains hidden. “In some respects,” The publisher says: “Apple’s messaging app remains stuck in the age of flip phones, which undermines everyone’s messaging security.” While Gizmodo says: “We must recognize that iOS users have a different experience than Android users when texting their iPhone friends. The version of RCS used by Apple is not encrypted, unlike iMessage.”

So was this inevitable and unsolvable? No – at least not in an understandable way. “Apple mainly blames limitations in the technology that connects the iPhone and Android messaging apps,” The publisher says. “That’s an incomplete explanation. Apple’s own decisions also make chats on Android devices worse.”

This means, as I explained, that Apple and Google could have collaborated on a secure API between their messengers to fully secure content and better compete with Signal, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger or SMS within their own walled gardens. Or Apple could have provided an iMessage app for Android.

Instead, this can’t really compete with the cross-platform security of those over-the-top messaging platforms. And that goes beyond some of the other clunky compromises SMS V2 brings to a dedicated cross-platform app.

While RCS has become popular through Google’s deliberate push across the Android ecosystem, it did so with a proprietary client that added a fully encrypted layer along with other updates. RCS itself does not provide complete security, and it is this limited protocol that Apple has adopted for its iOS 18 update. Apple has said it will work with mobile industry standard-setters to push for an improved protocol. But that won’t happen anytime soon. And until then, those compromises remain.

The bottom line is that Apple’s iMessage update gives users in Europe, Asia or Africa – where WhatsApp, Viber, Telegram and others dominate – no reason to switch. And in the US, where WhatsApp is on a roll, it’s just a validation of Meta’s tireless privacy campaign that’s been going on all year.

What makes this all the more interesting is Telegram and the recent troubles of its founder and frontman Pavel Durov. Telegram’s problem has always been the gap between its marketing and its reality. The messenger relies on security but does not fully encrypt its messages, just like RCS. Telegram’s true strategy has always been its rogue refusal to cooperate with the authorities – until now, one assumes – and its secrecy – which facilitates anonymity for users.

Durov’s arrest has raised questions among many of Telegram’s nearly one billion users about who will now have access to messages stored on Telegram’s servers, protected only by the platform’s own encryption (the key to which it holds itself) and its voluntary policies.

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The new RCS connection between iPhone and Android brings further compromises – which is not surprising, since the connection is based on a cellular protocol rather than a more dedicated integration between the platforms. Had Google and Apple set out to provide a simpler and more secure messaging experience between Android and iPhone, millions of users would not be affected by any of these issues or compromises right now.

All in all, fully encrypted, more seamless platforms – Signal and WhatsApp would be my favorites – don’t have these problems, although you should keep in mind that metadata is shared when using WhatsApp. But I don’t see any reason why anyone would switch their everyday messenger to iMessage or Google Messages. It’s just not worth the trade-offs and risks.