I asked if people chose iPhone for the blue bubbles elsewhere a couple days ago, and while there was some good discourse on that post, the blue bubbles definitely also came up as a reason.
In my experience, when people find out my texts are green, they oftentimes would rather switch to a different platform altogether like Instagram or just not text at all.
Is this actually a deal-breaker in friendships out there?
I think I’m miss stating my key point.
When I swap a SIM card out for one in the country I am in, how am I going to receive all my SMS and RCS messages tied to the phone number? Nobody uses SMS/RCS outside of North America. Making people in other countries pay per message to send me a text or photo is weird. And yes a lot of plans internationally still charge per message, which is why most messaging is on WhatsApp in Europe, South America, and Aftrica. Line in Asia. Kakao Talk in Korea, WeChat in China. And none of this has to do with iPhone not using RCS–which sure, they should adopt–but it’s because people don’t want their phone carrier involved in their messaging. So again, even if Apple implemented RCS–and they should–I don’t think we are seeing any kind switch back to using phone carriers to deliver messages outside of North America.
When I use iMessage I use my email address as the source/destination, not phone number. And in that sense, it is no different to me than WhatsApp, Line, KakaoTalk or WeChat. And I use all of those too depending on what country my recipient is in. Whether SMS/RCS I don’t want the message tied to a phone number that might be temporary. So again, when I ask my android friends to move to WhatsApp or another app it is not because iMessage is better. It’s that SMS and even RCS are worse than everything.
Fair enough, I see your point. I don’t take the SIM card out when traveling though, I use dual SIM.
I just think having a standardized messaging service is important, something that doesn’t need an app download or login. From what I can find RCS is free to use over Wi-Fi regardless of the country, and sending over data should also barely cost anything, it wouldn’t be a ‘per message’ charge like SMS. And I can’t help but wonder how much its adoption is affected by one of the world’s most influential corporations deciding to not support it. I guess that’s what’s so frustrating to me.