Samsung Messages will soon no longer be usable
The end of Samsung Messages is sealed. After the farewell was announced in mid-2024, the final date has now been set – at least in the USA. Germany and the rest of the world are likely to follow soon. Galaxy users will have to adapt.
Off for messenger app
In July 2026, the long-standing standard app for SMS and MMS on Samsung Galaxy smartphones will finally be discontinued. After the first announcement in mid-2024, the South Korean manufacturer is now taking this final step in the USA. Users of current devices with Android 12 or higher will have to switch to an alternative because, according to Samsung, sending messages via the old service will be blocked from that point onwards. The transition has been apparent for some time.
Samsung has been working with Google since 2018 to integrate the RCS standard into the Galaxy smartphone system. Therefore, the company also recommends the future use of Google Messages. In the latest models of the Galaxy S25 and Galaxy S26 series, the app is already installed on the devices ex works instead of Samsung Messages.
New possibilities with RCS
RCS, known as Rich Communication Services, offers features such as read receipts, high-resolution media transfer and typing indicators. Google has been pushing the standard massively for years. Apple now also supports RCS on the iPhone. Samsung also integrates AI-supported filters against spam directly into the messages. The move to Google Messages pools development resources and prevents fragmentation of the Android platform.
As Samsung announces on the website for its soon-to-be-retired messaging app, the change is being actively supported. Users receive detailed instructions on how to switch to Google Messages via notifications within the app. After setting it up as the new default application, the old icon on devices starting from Android 14 will automatically be replaced by the icon of the new messenger. The old software will no longer be available in the Galaxy Store starting this summer.
Limitations on old devices
However, the change does not go smoothly for all users. According to Samsung, older smartphones that came onto the market before 2022 may experience temporary failures in ongoing chats via RCS during the changeover phase. Normal SMS messages are not affected. A complete exception are older devices with Android 11 or lower. The original app remains fully functional there for the time being due to compatibility issues. Owners of older smartwatches also feel the effects.
Watches with the Tizen OS operating system that were released before the Galaxy Watch 4 do not support Google’s alternative. Text messages can still be received and sent, but the complete chat history is missing. The old wearables only display incoming messages individually. The messenger change marks the final end of an era. In the future, Samsung will focus more on the further development of its own One UI user interface for other system applications and will leave the field of text communication entirely to its partner Google. There is still no official information about when the change will take place for German users. However, it seems likely that this will happen soon.
