The Samsung Galaxy S25 was notable for being a boring phone in a lot of ways, but there were a few notcable changes. It was the first Samsung S-series phone to come without the Samsung Messages app. In a bizarre move, though, Samsung is adding new features to the app it supposedly killed off.
Samsung recently flipped back on support for RCS on its Messages app, which briefly supported RCS before becoming SMS-only again—RCS messages were to be handled by the Google Messages app. Now, a new update was quietly rolled out which actually brings more RCS features that weren’t present in even the original implementation of RCS on the app.
This update sees the introduction of a new message-editing feature. It allows users running One UI 7 on Galaxy devices to edit messages sent to other compatible Galaxy devices. You can edit a message up to three times within 15 minutes of sending it by long-pressing the message, selecting “edit,” making changes, and resending. Edited messages are clearly marked, and an edit history is available.
The RCS Universal Profile 2.7 standard includes provisions for message editing, a capability absent in the older SMS standard. Google Messages has supported it for a while, so Samsung is just conforming to the newer capabilities on its app. Another addition includes the ability to auto-delete OTP codes after 24 hours. A lot of people, myself included, have a wasteland of old OTP codes on our Messages app, and this feature would be extremely helpful to cut down on that.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for Samsung developing its own Messages app and making it better. I don’t think Google should have a monopoly on messaging on Android phones, and if the excuse is RCS, technically anyone can add RCS to their messaging app. But this is bizarre for a few reasons. Not only did Samsung stop shipping this app on its flagships a few months ago (even though you can still grab it from the Galaxy Store), but it has not been the default app for messages on Samsung flagship phones for at least a few years. Samsung Messages was there, but it was a shell of itself, and the first-choice Messages app was Google’s.
The partnership even went a full step ahead with Google making a “One UI-esque” exclusive theme for the Google Messages app that only showed up on Samsung phones. This was actually added a whopping four years ago. The writing was on the wall for a long, long time, and Samsung itself confirmed its demise last year. We at How-To Geek also thought it was dead, and we even made a tutorial to migrate from one app to another. And as a fun fact, Samsung itself reconfirmed this just less than a month ago.
To not only re-support the app but also add brand-new features to it, after telling everyone several times that it was being retired and directing users out of it, is certainly curious. Maybe Samsung doesn’t plan to kill off the app in some markets (it might choose to keep it alive in South Korea, for example), or it might just have backtracked on its decision and will begin supporting it again for everyone.
The app is, right now, still available only on the Galaxy Store, and official guidance by Samsung directing users to switch to Google Messages is still around. So they might have not taken a direction on this issue just yet. We just know that the updates exist and are live despite what Samsung has said about the app in the past, which is the conflicting fact on the table right now.
