Google has officially adopted the next-gen “RCS” text messaging protocol, which doesn’t really matter right now if you don’t use its Google Fi service. However, the company is also pushing every single carrier to move to RCS from SMS — a much-needed upgrade — and that will have a significant impact on your texting, selfie-sending, and GIF-blasting going forward.

iPhone users have it easy. iMessage comes preinstalled, and it achieves more than even the best messaging apps on Android. iMessage is end-to-end encrypted, it supports SMS and it’s packed with features that range from gimmicky (Animoji) to can’t-live-without-it useful (Memoji).

The experience of one iPhone user messaging another is seamless, secure, and convenient. The same can’t be said for Android users.

Whether you have friends or family members who work and live different schedules than you, or you find yourself sending more “happy belated birthday” messages than you’d like, having the ability to schedule text messages ahead of time is an incredibly useful feature.

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You already know you shouldn’t sleep near your phone because doing so screws with your sleep schedule. Here’s another reason: You could text nonsense to your friends and have no memory of the conversation in the morning.

Teenagers don't enjoy talking to their parents. Actually, scratch that. Many don't talk that much to their friends either, at least not with their voices. Teenagers like to text. Walk into any establishment where teens hang out and you will see them clumped together in small groups hovering over their cell phones. Sometimes they even text the people sitting right next to them.

It's a strange way of life.

One of the most exciting notifications you can get on your phone is a new message from your crush/current bae. One of the most anxious feelings is waiting for that notification to come in. What if we just eliminated texting in relationships all together?

Video: If you work from home, you know how important it is to stay connected with your boss and coworkers via email and chat programs such as Slack. The trouble is, text-only communication can leave a lot up to the imagination in terms of tone. Is your online boss really a jerk who hates everything you do? Or are you just reading their messages in the worst way possible?

Want to drive safer but always end up getting distracted by your phone? With the news that using your phone while driving will soon be punishable with far stricter penalties, you may want to correct those bad habits. But would you trust a phone app to help you use your phone less while driving?

We'll be the first to say that being worried about someone knowing if you've read their message is a little ridiculous. Reading the message is the whole point of texting and yet... we can also admit there are some strategic reasons why you'd want a message to appear unread. Many messaging services like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and DMs on Twitter all support read receipts. iMessage-sending iPhone users have read receipts too, with a fun caveat: they're very easy to get around.

In iOS, the read receipts option can be toggled on in the Settings app, under Messages. If you usually keep this option off then you'll never have to worry about sending read receipts, even if the person you're texting has theirs set to "On".

If you usually have read receipts turned on, however, but want to secretly read a message, 3D Touch is your friend here.

There's no magic bullet or divine secret to maintaining a romantic relationship - every couple is different. But if there's one thing that's almost always guaranteed to help, it's more communication. And yes, even the silly, superfluous kind will do.

This week we have a man that met the girl of his dreams, but work got in the way before romance could blossom. Is there a good way to contact the one that got away and rekindle the magic?

Some people have problems that require delicate advice from a qualified professional. Others just need a random a guy on the internet to kick 'em in the teeth (with honesty, that is). I'm the latter. Welcome back to Tough Love.

If you get a text from Facebook, then you probably don't want to respond -- even if your response is something along the lines of "Stop texting me."

Google has released more messaging apps than I can remember (Allo, Android Messages, Messenger, Hangouts, Gchat, the list goes on), but the company has never been able to come up with a single service that can easily handle your messages on all platforms the way iMessage does for iOS and Mac devices. Now, Google may have finally figured it out by copying one of Apple's best features: Desktop SMS messaging.

Were you afflicted by the devastating epidemic, first recognised less than a decade ago, of people bending their necks to look at their phones? Then you had "text neck", a disease that almost certainly never existed in the first place.

Someone you're interested in dating gave you their number and asked you to text them. Hard part is over, right? Wrong: your entire romantic future here could be determined by your first few text messages. Here's the best way to approach texting someone you want to date, according to the experts.

We asked for readers' most bizarre, awkward wrong number calls and text messages and, boy, did they deliver. These tales of "whoa" involve everything from clueless callers to tactless texters, playful responses to toilet phones, and everything in between.

Even with smartphones and caller ID, wrong number calls and texts still happen all the time. What's the most bizarre one you've ever received? And how did you handle it?

The gay emojis are here. Smiley face!