I personally use QKSMS, which isn't perfect, but it's all I've been able to stand since Signal dropped SMS support.
This RCS stuff scares me a bit, because it sounds like it will function over a data connection and not be nearly as universal of a standard as SMS/MMS is. There are already a million such apps and standards if one wants to use data for messaging. Trying to sneak it on top of SMS is very annoying. If I use my SMS app, I want my messages to be sent as such. Getting a surprise data bill shouldn't be a fear.
That looks like it's stopped being developed too. Connect You, a Contacts app originally, is adding SMS support— but right now it kind of sucks, so we probably want to wait a bit for development.
I personally use QKSMS, which isn't perfect, but it's all I've been able to stand since Signal dropped SMS support.
This RCS stuff scares me a bit, because it sounds like it will function over a data connection and not be nearly as universal of a standard as SMS/MMS is. There are already a million such apps and standards if one wants to use data for messaging. Trying to sneak it on top of SMS is very annoying. If I use my SMS app, I want my messages to be sent as such. Getting a surprise data bill shouldn't be a fear.
QKSMS hasn't been maintained in a while, besides one update at the start of 2023.
It may be better to go with, and I personally just use, PartisanSMS which is an improved fork of QKSMS.
That looks like it's stopped being developed too. Connect You, a Contacts app originally, is adding SMS support— but right now it kind of sucks, so we probably want to wait a bit for development.
I think that in SMS there simply is not more to have, they have everything needed.
There haven't been any issues, so I don't see why development is needed.