Glossary
RCS (Rich Communication Services)
RCS is the carrier messaging standard that replaces SMS with chat features; on Android its messages live in the messaging app's database, not mmssms.db.
RCS (Rich Communication Services) is a GSMA standard for carrier messaging that adds chat features to the phone number: typing indicators, read receipts, high-resolution photos and video, group chats with names, and delivery over mobile data or Wi-Fi instead of the SMS channel. The Universal Profile defines the common feature set; on Android the dominant client is Google Messages, which connects either to the carrier's RCS service or to Google's Jibe platform.
Google Messages has offered end-to-end encryption for one-to-one RCS chats between its users since 2021 and for groups since 2023; newer Universal Profile releases add cross-platform encryption as carriers and clients adopt them. Encryption protects messages in transit only: on the handset the messages sit in the app's database.
For forensics the key point is storage. SMS and MMS go through Android's telephony provider and land in mmssms.db. RCS messages do not: Google Messages keeps them in its own bugle_db, and other OEM messaging apps use their own stores. A logical extraction that reads only the SMS provider therefore misses RCS conversations entirely. The messaging apps guide covers how to collect and compare them.