If you were wondering what the blue dot means on Samsung Contacts, the answer is quite straightforward. The contact has RCS enabled (you do, too) and you can send and receive much more than simple text messages and blurry MMS photos. You shouldn’t see the dot if the RCS is disabled on your device. So, the blue dot is nothing to worry about but, then again, if you want Samsung Messages to be just the SMS app, you can disable RCS. Learn how to do it below.
Why is there a blue dot on some of my contacts?
When you see a contact with a blue dot next to it in Samsung Messages, that particular contact has an RCS-ready device. We already wrote about RCS and advanced messaging capabilities that put it far ahead of outdated MMS and SMS technologies. To sum up everything, RCS (Rich Communication Services) is a globally available Android messaging service that brings instant messaging features to default SMS apps. Of course, you’ll need a network connection to use it (Wi-Fi or mobile data).
With RCS, you can send photos, audio, and video files one-on-one or in groups just like you would on WhatsApp or Telegram. Have in mind that, if you don’t have an internet connection or the recipient doesn’t use RCS, text messages will be sent as SMS. The main idea (at least to our understanding) is to make a counterpart of iMessage for Android and reduce fragmentation.
One app to bind all users instead of 5 messaging apps for different contacts. RCS is available on most Android devices. At this moment, you’ll need to use either Google Messages or Samsung Messages. Other OEMs are slowly incorporating RCS into their default messaging apps or switching to Google Messages.
Now, although the majority of users rely on Google Messages for RCS, Samsung Messages offer the same capabilities. The RCS is there, along with Categories and all other goodies. These include Location Sharing, Scheduled Messages, Voice messages, and a few more. One can say that Google is catching up to Samsung in this department, because of Google’s awful history with dozen of messaging apps.
How to disable RCS on your Samsung phone
So, the blue dot means that your contact and you can exchange multimedia files, and get real-time read receipts, without a word limit or SMS fee. But, if you don’t want to use this feature and want to remove blue dots from Samsung Messages disable the Chat features.
- Open Samsung Messages.
- Tap on the 3-dots menu and select Settings.
- Tap Chat settings.
- Disable Chat features.
And, with that said, we can conclude this article. Thank you for reading we managed to explain what is the deal with the blue dot next to Samsung contacts. Do you use RCS Chat Features on your Android? Tell us in the comments below.
Editor’s note: This article was initially published in May 2022. We made sure to revamp it for freshness and accuracy.
