How to turn off RCS messaging before switching to a new phone

Every now and then we switch to a new phone. The migration process from moving from one phone to another is pretty simple and straightforward, especially if you enable features like cloud syncing where you don’t even need to plug your new phone to your computer to retrieve data like contact information, photos, messages, and so on.

That being said, there is something to note, and that is if and when you do switch to a new phone, you might want to consider turning off or disabling RCS messages first. This is because if you don’t do that, there could be issues with receiving new text messages on your new phone because there is a chance that new messages could continue going to your old phone for up to 8 days.

In fact, this is something that Google actually recommends users to do.

This is actually a similar problem that iOS users have when it comes to iMessages. So, if moving to a new phone is something you’re considering and you want to learn how to avoid this issue with RCS messages, then read on to find out how to turn off RCS messages.

Turning off RCS messages

1. Open the Messages app on your old/current phone
2. On the top right corner, tap the three dot icon
3. Select Settings and go to Chat features
4. Toggle “Enable chat features” off

Note that if you go through your settings and you do not see “Chat features”, that means your device does not support RCS. If it does, then you have RCS and you should turn it off. You can repeat the process if you want to turn it back on. You can also check on your new phone to see if that device supports it.

What are RCS messages?

Back in the day, the only way to send text messages from one mobile device to another would be to SMS. This was back then where mobile internet was terrible and almost unusable and where apps like WhatsApp did not exist. The use of SMS has dwindled grealy over the years and are mostly used by services like banks to send you OTP or notifications.

RCS, on the other hand, is meant to be an upgraded version of SMS that lets users send media rich files to each other like they would a chat app. The main difference and advantage is that RCS is app agnostic, meaning that you don’t need to check if the other user has the same app for you to send or receive RCS messages.

In a way, you could look at RCS messages as being a more universal messaging system compared to platform exclusives like Apple’s iMessage or BlackBerry’s BBM from back in the day.