TL;DR
- The RCS Universal Profile 4.0 announced support for cross-platform video calls.
- Google Messages currently supports video calls though ViLTE and Meet.
- In its latest beta, Messages adds a new string explicitly referencing RCS video calls.
It’s almost hard to believe that we’re still finding new ways to improve messaging in 2026 — you’d think we would have gotten it pretty nailed down by now. But even after RCS arrived to start modernizing how we text, the addition of more and more new features keeps us excited about the next big upgrade waiting for us. A couple months back, the publication of the RCS Universal Profile 4.0 laid the groundwork for cross-platform RCS video calls, and now we already may be seeing the early signs of Google Messages building out support.
Let’s get one thing very clear here, early on: That “may be” is doing a lot of heavy lifting, and right now we really don’t have any clear sense for just how functional these recent changes are. But even without the full picture, we’re still excited to see Messages acknowledging RCS video calls.
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For this find, we’re checking out version messages.android_20260515_00_RC00.phone.openbeta_dynamic of Google Messages. And in this new beta, we’re now seeing the presence of a just-added text string:
Code
<string name="rcs_video_call_title">Video call</string>While Messages already offers video call support through Google Meet and carrier-based ViLTE, this string is quite clearly about RCS video calls in specific. Despite having that explicit label, we’d caution against reading too much into this.
At least, while it’s nice to think that Google has made implementing RCS video calls a top priority for Messages devs, we just don’t have the evidence to support such a claim yet. It’s entirely possible that this new string is just a part of efforts to make Messages aware of the Universal Profile 4.0’s feature set, and letting it communicate what it does and doesn’t support.
Still, an RCS fan can always dream, right? And even if RCS video call support isn’t in the immediate future of Messages, at least we now know that it’s on developers’ radar.
⚠️ An APK teardown helps predict features that may arrive on a service in the future based on work-in-progress code. However, it is possible that such predicted features may not make it to a public release.
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Frequently Asked Questions
In the beta version messages.android_20260515_00_RC00.phone.openbeta_dynamic, a just-added string explicitly referencing RCS video calls was found: a text string named rcs_video_call_title with the value Video call.
Yes, but through Google Meet and carrier-based ViLTE, not via RCS. The new string is quite clearly about RCS video calls specifically.
RCS Universal Profile 4.0 is the standard published a couple of months back that laid the groundwork for cross-platform RCS video calls.
No. The article cautions against reading too much into the find, since the string may just be part of efforts to make Messages aware of the Universal Profile 4.0 feature set. Also, APK teardown findings predict features that may never make it to a public release.
