On Android phones, each individual Tapback generates an entirely new block of text with a text description of the reaction and the entire original text.
A new update to the Google Messages app, which was spotted over the weekend by 9to5Google and appears to be rolling out to some Android users now, fixes that issue by translating Tapback responses into emoji responses.Android devices using the Messages app have been able to send each other emoji responses for over a year now, but this is Google’s first attempt to map Apple’s response mechanism to its own.
Of course, in an ideal world, the non-stopgap solution to this communication problem would be for Apple to add RCS messaging support to iPhones, or for it to make iMessage an open standard, or for Apple and Google and the world’s phone carriers to get on the same page about a single standard that they can all support.