For SMS texts, you probably use the app that already comes with your phone — if it’s an Android phone, it’s probably Google Messages. But if you had an Android phone several years ago, you would find that not only were there several third-party SMS apps for you to check out, but also some apps actually wanted to be do-it-all messaging apps and also do SMS. One of those apps was Facebook Messenger. Now, though, after a long time, SMS support is finally leaving the app.
Facebook Messenger first added SMS support in 2016, back when third-party SMS apps were more popular. Now, though, they aren’t. As part of Google’s push towards RCS, most Android phones out there currently come with Google’s Messages app, and it’s what most Android users use as far as texts go. Facebook Messenger wanted to be your default messaging app for, well, everything, and part of that strategy included supporting SMS texts. However, Meta (the parent company of Facebook) has now confirmed support for SMS texts within the app will be removed on September 28, with a support page saying that you “will still be able to send and receive SMS messages through your cellular network and access your SMS message history through your phone’s new default messaging app.”
It should be noted that Facebook Messenger isn’t doing poorly, or anything. In fact, it’s still as alive as ever, serving as the messaging component of Meta’s main social network, Facebook. There could be many reasons behind the removal of SMS messages from the app — if we had to guess, it’s probably because people stopped looking for third-party apps for SMS.
The support page notes that SMS support will be removed when you update the app after that date, so presumably, if you were to avoid updates from that date onwards, you’d presumably keep SMS support. Then again, that’s a bad idea. If you have an Android phone, Google’s Messages app provides a more secure, and overall better, alternative in RCS, with (at least partially) encrypted chats, high-quality multimedia sharing, read receipts, and many more things. And it also supports SMS for those few phones that don’t have RCS.
Source: Reddit, Facebook Help Center
Via: 9to5Google
