India, May 12 -- For millions of mobile users, a small lock icon will soon be a sign of the significant progress that's been made toward a private messaging ability for cross-platform users. Apple and Google have begun beta testing the rollout of end-to-end encrypted Rich Communication Services (RCS) messaging for chats between iPhone users and Android users. The rollout of this feature will begin today for iPhone users on iOS 26.5 with compatible carriers and Android users utilizing the newest version of Google Messages.

With this end-to-end encryption being implemented into the RCS messaging format that replaces traditional SMS messaging, RCS now has a much more robust privacy layer, which to date has been primarily lacking, for use on...