Sounds like it transfers the ID Out-of-band, so that’s good, does the desktop get the chat history then? (It’s possible it pulls chat history from the phone).
Oh, I agree with the closed source issue. That makes it a no-sale for me.
Keep in mind that RCS is still SMS to anyone without Google Messages.
Also, the encryption in RCS is problematic - last time I read how it worked I wasn’t convinced it was as secure as advertised (I don’t recall why, but I think it’s because it’s not really E2E).
Noticed in one of your comments this is happening on Signal desktop. Is this a windows machine? Maybe update your post so people are aware it’s no on Android
Its not hard to flash a rom these days, unlike ten years ago.
Now developers post instructions for each device type. Look at Lineage, Graphene, DivestOS. Very good instructions from all of them, including installing ADB on Windows or Linux.
Of the dozens (hundreds?) of times I’ve flashed over the years, I’ve bricked 1 device, and that was from experimenting and not following instructions, I knew it was risky.
And with Pixel it’s about as straightforward as it gets.