New user here / first post, installed GOS upon purchasing a new 7a a few days ago - was following this thread since RCS chats wasn't working for me (would be stuck at Verifying), which was a feature that was working with my provider (Mint) on my previous phone.
Just now I was going through Permissions Manager under Privacy since it was a menu I haven't gone through yet. I scrolled down to SMS and saw that Google (installed for Google Lens / Translate), Google Play services, and Google Play Store was under "Not Allowed". I gave all three permissions, and now I have "Status: Connected" for the first time ever.
Forgive me if this is not relevant to this current discussion with using beta versions and things, but I wanted to share. I'll keep an eye on it for now, and would be curious to know if this is even a desirable solution.
Messages for me will be a tertiary messaging app since most of my day-to-day messaging happens on other apps, so I wasn't too bothered about the permissions.