Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority
TL;DR Google Fi finally makes web calling and RCS coexist.
The fix comes with a trade-off: calling and messaging now live in two separate web portals.
A new Web Calls page handles voice and voicemail, while RCS messaging shifts to Google Messages for Web.
If you’ve ever tried to manage calls or texts from your laptop with Google Fi and ended up frustrated, you’re not alone. For quite a while, web-based calls and messaging didn’t work well with RCS, but that’s starting to improve.
Google has now rolled out a fix that lets you keep web calling features alongside modern RCS messaging, 9to5Google reports. However, the new solution still isn’t as streamlined as many hoped.
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Google is splitting up the band. Previously, everything lived in one unified web portal. Now, Google has decoupled calling from messaging to break the technical deadlock that prevented RCS support. The company already hinted at this back in October during its first Feature Reveal, when it promised full RCS support for Fi’s web experience on laptops and tablets.
There is now a new portal just for voice, and it’s currently available to Android users (sorry, iPhone owners). If you go to fi.google.com/webcalls, you can check your voicemail and make calls right from your browser. This site manages voice traffic and keeps the feature that lets you make calls even if your phone is turned off.
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