RCS verification

[Colisa]

Hey so i recently changed over to bell and they keep telling me ways to aet up my RCS but it won't validate its stuck in a samsara a loop of "setting up" "validating" google says contact bell, bell aays contact google, i followed all their stepa nothing works please someone help me so i can text my global friends without them getting charged insane tsxt fees 

[WelshTerrier · Accepted solution]

Good Day & Welcome to the Bell Community Forum.

Which model of device are you using?

When you are in the process of verifying your phone number, your RCS chats status displays “Setting up.” If the “Setting up” status remains for more than a day, it means Google Messages can’t verify your phone number.

To verify your phone number:

1. On your device, open the Messages app.
2. At the top right, tap your Profile picture or Initials.
3. Tap Messages settings and then RCS chats. 
4. Select Retry.
5. Confirm your phone number when requested.

If you don't find Retry in the app. Or if you tap Retry and it doesn't solve the problem:

1. On your device, open the Settings app.
2. Click on Apps.
3. Find and tap Google Messages app.
4. Clear storage and clear cache.

Tip: If you can't find "RCS chats," tap Chat features.

I did some further investigation & follow up on the Samsung support website & the problem you are experiencing is a well know device issue.

Please have a look at the following web links. There are a couple of suggested fixes mentioned in links 3 & 4 below.

1. Samsung S25 Ultra: RCS Messages, Unable to Receive Group Texts - Samsung Community
2. RCS not working on new S25 - Samsung Community
3. How to turn off RCS chats
4. Turn on RCS chats in Google Messages - Google Messages
5. Can't turn on RCS chats - Google Messages

Have you contacted Samsung Galay S25 Ultra tech support & reported the issue that you are experiencing?

 FYI Only. There has been a similar issue reported with the Samsung S24 Ultra. Please Go to the helpful replies

Take care.

[Colisa]

I have retried for days now it won't go through 

[dks · Accepted solution]

I have recently come across references in online forums that the there are serious problems with Google Messages, especially with Samsung phones, dating back to March 2025. While these issues have apparently been rectified and Bell does support the RCS protocol, this line about the nature of RCS struck me as interesting.

• SMS and MMS messages are delivered, no matter whether a smartphone is connected via cellular data (for example, using a carrier’s data plan), a Wi-Fi router (for Internet access), or merely a cellular signal (sufficient for voice calls). By contrast, RCS messages simply wait forever if a phone is connected only to a cellular signal. RCS packets don’t go through until both the sender — and then the recipient — connect to a Wi-Fi router or to a carrier’s data plan.

The issue may be the Google Messages app itself and not a Bell issue. I can't say this is your issue, but it certainly gives one pause. 

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[Green Bean · Accepted solution]

I had the same issue after switching to Bell from Rogers and finally got mine working again. Found some Reddit threads about this issue but none of the seemed to work for me so I combined steps from multiple threads. (OnePlus 12 running the latest Android 15 October security update. Should work for any Android 15 phone)

First make sure your phone and the messages app are fully updated.

Turn off Wi-Fi and make sure you're connected to 5G

Open the message app go to settings and turn off RCS chats.

Open your browser and go to Google. Click on your Google account picture, at the bottom click more settings, then click Google account settings. Then go to the personal info tab and click on your phone number. Delete your number from your Google account and refresh the page. Make sure your number isn't there anymore and also make sure it's deleted at the bottom of the page if it's used for 2 step verification.

Go into your phone's settings and click on apps then app management. Click the 3 dots in the top right corner and click show system. Scroll down and click carrier communications. Click force stop and confirm. Then click storage usage and clear the cache. Go back to the app management screen and do the same force stop and cache clear for carrier location services and the messages app.

Close all of your phones background apps then turn on airplane mode long enough to get the symbol then turn it back off to reconnect to 5G. (Not sure if this step does anything but including it anyway because I did it)

Restart your phone. Go back into Google settings in your browser and add your phone number back to your account. Verify your number there - you should receive a SMS text with a verification code within a minute or so. Finally go into messages and turn on RCS chats. Mine connected in about 10-20 seconds!

Hope this helps!

[tpike]

Dude! THANK YOU. I cannot TELL YOU how many things I tried to get this to work after switching from Rogers to Bell.. I literally gave up on it for over a month and a half but it was annoying me so much I decided to dig into trouble shooting again today. This solution actually worked..I'm mind blown. Thank you!!

[PetalWhisper]

RCS has finally been working after months of troubleshooting. Without uninstall and reinstalling, no clearing of cache, just simply removing my phone number on all Google Accounts. 

I tried the long intricate method shared here, but this Reddit post made it actually work for me: 
I just simply remove my phone number on all my Google accounts and verify RCS and voila! It connected within seconds! Good luck everyone! 

[NewJon]

I have the same device : Google Pixel 10

I was on an extended chat with the Bell Customer support and the rep knew what she was doing. Asked me to try the usual which I had already tried, but followed all the steps as I was told anyway.

What worked for me (so far) was disable auto verification from : 

Clear cache and data: Go to your phone's Settings > Apps > Google
Messages > Storage. Clear the cache and data. Repeat this for the
"Carrier Services" app as well.

- Disable Phone Number Verification: Go to your phone's Settings >
Google > All Services > Phone Number Verification and turn it off. Then,
in Google Messages, disable RCS chats and restart your phone before
turning RCS back on.

---------------------------------

After following this I could see "RCS connected". Person to Person chat was encrypted, but group chat was not encrypted.
However that was resolved after a few hours (4 maybe). This was resolved yesterday afternoon and as of now it is still encrypted.

I have not yet toggled back ON Phone number verification

Everything seems to be working so far!

[Steve6003]

thank you @NewJon , after several other attempts, this method seems to have worked. the only difference I think was to turn off phone number verification. I see the same thing with encryption, so I will wait to see if that kicks in, but at least I am back into my RCS text groups. 

thanks for you help

[Jonw89 · Accepted solution]

I found a fix that is not entirely covered in most posts I see. The usual force stop, airplane mode, clear cache and data etc wasn't doing it for me. 

Turning off auto verify numbers and deleting the number from Google also didn't do it.

What I did find however is I have multiple google accounts on my device, and so my phone number was linked to each of those as well. I had to go https://myaccount.google.com/phone and actually flip between each of my Google accounts and full remove the number here. Once I did all that and checked rcs, now it was actually failing for too many attempts instead of stuck on connecting. Turned rcs off and on again and connected instantly. 

[WelshTerrier]

Good Day & Welcome.

@Jonw89  Thank you for taking the time to share this RCS solution with the Bell Community Forum.

Take care.

[Binong]

My old number successfully ported from virginplus, it is what I wanted.

Calling, texting works good.

It's just on google messages app. RCS settings couldn't work because it recognize the unique temporary number not my old number and when I go to eSim settings where you can turn it on or off. Unique number still being recognize.

 

[dks]

Thank you for your question. Please try the suggestions found in this thread marked helpful replies. They have a green checkmark. 

[MattD677]

WORKED!!!

[thechristians]

I've done everything on this forum, and nothing has changed. It just goes from "connecting" to "not supported". Stating "your device does not meet security requirements". It worked on my S24 Ultra but stopped on my S26 Ultra. I tried putting the SIM back into my old phone, and RCS no longer works there either now.