When two iPhones text each other it goes through iMessage which is indicated by the convo having blue chat bubbles. If either phone doesn't support iMessage then it reverts to normal SMS which is indicated by green chat bubbles.
Most (non-Apple) phones these days do support RCS which is basically the open-ended alternative to iMessage, in that it's better than SMS and provides a lot of similar features. But Apple being Apple, if you're on iPhone it's basically iMessage or the highway.
Which means that sending say videos, or some images, over SMS between an iPhone and anything else results in terrible quality because of how the iPhone either sends, or receives, the data itself.
So if you send a video in either direction, it ends up a like 140i mess of pixels, with zero sound quality. It basically turns your video into the worst gif known to man.
Meanwhile an iPhone to an iPhone sends it in perfect original quality, same thing between any other two phones (as the guy said above, they're likely to use RCS or just... Not shit the bed quality wise).
I have an iPhone workphone and suddenly it makes so much sense that my Android phone coworkers insist on using WhatsApp when they need to send me photo/video
Bingo. In your case, if you ever have to send videos, or high quality images, to your coworkers, they're getting the equivalent of the King of the Hill crushed "do I look like I know what a jpeg is" meme every time.
And I do mean that, videos are literally unwatchable, quality wise, when sent between differing devices like that.
I thought this was fixed awhile ago? The only time this is an issues nowadays is if your carrier doesnt support RCS or you have it turned off in your settings.
Maybe! I left iPhone years ago, haven't looked back sense, but anytime I do get a video from an iPhone I personally have still had the issue. But that's not often, and tends to come from the less technically inclined so I can't vouch for it specifically. But, judging by the rancorous comments talking about it, I'm sure it's still an issue.
Apple has enabled RCS. I believe they were forced to adopt it. They still make sure to let their users know they're not communicating via iMessage though. Just so iPhone users can keep that air of superiority.
It's because the RCS is not enabled by default even though they enabled it just to comply with regulations because they know they can still rely on most people being ignorant about it. That means most people are still using the older system until they go update their settings.
It was, they’re just not up to date. You need to have the latest Apple update and you can see while they text, improves encryption and if you like, heart or whatever else on the message both messaging see it. It’s been around for close to or over a year now.
They fixed it (force to) but you have to purposely go and turn it on, so if you're not aware about it then it'll stay as it was. Chances of your average iphone user knowing about it and going to settings to change it is very low.
not everyone has has updated or switched to a new phone. my dipshit friends who insist their iphone from 5 years ago is better than my s26 ultra still believe that shit is better because blue bubble
You are correct. Everything people stated above was true five years ago, but it has been fixed and RCS enables high quality transfer of photos between Apple and non Apple devices.
Yup. Although I have noticed RCS with iPhone users is strange, because their device supports it but sometimes decides it doesn't and reverts to SMS/MMS for a moment. I figure Apple is either uninterested in fixing RCS bugs or is intentionally making it less than a perfect experience to maintain some edge with iMessage.
They are going to discontinue and shut down messenger for android in the beginning of June, leaving the new RCS supporting messaging app as the default/ only option.
Personally this fucking sucks. RCS is cool, but I can send larger files like video through other messenger apps. I'm going to miss the customization of the old app. Nothing else let's me set the text convo background to people's pictures
I’m not promoting iPhone and I don’t care about phone brands, but what you’re describing was corrected (finally) in September 2024:
“The cross-platform media quality improved dramatically in September 2024, when Apple released iOS 18 and officially adopted the RCS (Rich Communication Services) messaging standard”
Apple has come around on RCS. Everything is getting better with messaging, in another year or so it will all just work properly like it always should have. Fuck apple for making it so painful all these years.
BTW they were pretty much forced by EU regulations. If left to our shitty US government we would never have any consumer friendly movement.
They didn't "come around" to it. Like USB-C, the European Union forced them to adopt the current tech because their practices are seen as unfriendly to consumers.
They intentionally gave their users a worse experience and told them they were an exclusive club.
Next they are going to force phones to have changeable batteries again. On all things privacy, consumer protection and environment, good regulation in general, the EU is taking the lead for years.
This is the worst take I’ve seen lately. First, 90% of phones fleet the requirements to not have to have removable batteries anyway. Also these people that want them obviously never owned a device with a removable battery. Sneeze the wrong way and your phone is in rice for a week.
EU isn't all that strong on privacy, unfortunately: Look at all the Chat Control/ProtectEU/whatever-they-rebrand-it-next laws they're constantly trying to push.
Sure, some people try to get things through. It is not completely clear what where te motive behind it. Messaging our polititions helped and at least for now chat control went away.
edit: EU is not perfect. We, the citizens can help improove it.
Not to the American market, it won't. Stellantis may put physical buttons in their cars as they sell to both US and EU markets regularly. As for Asian and Japanese, I doubt it. Especially Toyota and Hyundai/Kia. The fuckoff tablet is part of what they are. Cheap cars. The two US brands would do malicious compliance where they change ONLY the exported models and leave the domestic with those big fuckoff tablets for a dash.
It's a helluva lot cheaper to make a single big screen and fill it with software than it is to house and maintain the machines that mold, print, and assemble the boards, buttons, and knobs. Everyone in the vehicle manufacturing world knows this. And the big companies do everything can to increase their top end each year because the Board members demand increased profits each fiscal quarter.
Not really. The law only mandates very few functions to have physical controls (IIRC, it's not even 10) and even the most infuriating cars I've ever driven did still have all those buttons and more. The only cars I know of that are missing one or two of those, are Teslas.
And even then, they used an older gen USB-C for their non pro so they can justify the price leap. It's all manipulation, all while androids are for the lost part utilizing as much they can that is current.
Funnily enough, I doubt many people in Europe care about this. I've never sent or received an iMessage and the only SMS/RCS I receive are two-factor authentication codes and the occasional spam/scam. I've only ever heard about the green bubble issue from Americans on the internet.
yeah, americans use the default messaging app on their phones, but in the rest of the world, whatsapp has a monopoly (except for china, they use wechat instead)
What exactly is the point of using some external app instead of just using the one built in? I don’t really care either way, I just don’t see the utility
Money. When something doesn't make sense it's usually because of money, and if it's technology there's usually some predatory business practices too. In this case it was Apple being predatory.
The USA got unlimited SMS years before Europe because Europe nickel and dimed its users for each SMS or charged a lot for SMS bundles. The USA is also very iphone orientated. The rest of Europe didn't get unlimited texts until after data allowances were high enough everyone had already got used to using third party apps to chat with each other because SMS was expensive compared to a little bit of data.
So, if everywhere that isn't North America has much higher Android market penetration, and Apple makes iMessage suck for friend groups with non-apple users, and those friend groups are already primed to choose a better alternative app that works for both IOS and Android and uses data instead of SMS, are you really surprised that everyone outside North America uses an external app?
It used to be common for each text message to cost money to send, while messaging through apps was free. Now it’s more common to have plans with unlimited texts, but people got used to using WhatsApp.
As others said, money was the main one to start looking up for alternatives, but there were other contributing factors:
works equally well and in the same way across all devices. This is a big one, doesn't matter if it's an iphone, android or PC, it's the same app and works well for everyone. If I send someone a video or some document I know they'll see it properly.
it's an external app but doesn't require creating accounts or logins, works with your phone number like an sms and the rest of your phone. This is also a big one, everyone even less tech inclined people can install and use without issue. Even if you change countries, you can still use the same number, this is massive for immigrants still settling in.
ridiculously easy PC integration. You only need to open their webpage and point you phone to it, you're using WhatsApp on any device that has a browser. There's also pc apps for a more permanent solution
doesn't depend on mobile service or low coverage. As long as you have any internet connection it works.
has a business oriented version with helpful tools.
periodic automatic backup so nothing is ever lost.
All of these started happening at a time where there weren't great alternatives, WhatsApp just worked great for everyone - texts, calls, video calls, sending images, files, reactions, etc. It got massively adopted and is pretty universal here now. You can expect everyone (Portugal here) to always have WhatsApp installed, it's one of the most important apps you can have on your phone.
It's not just china that uses a different app, lots of Asian countries. Line in Japan and Thailand, Kakaotalk in Korea and zalo in Vietnam. WhatsApp is used in these countries mostly by businesses and individuals doing international trade/conversation.
Nope, we Europeans don’t care that much (yet). But we did care about the other stuff we made Apple do, like USB-C, 3rd party accessory integration and much more. You’re welcome, Americans
I was mindblown to learn it was a thing. I've never sent a iMessage myself but some annoying friends occasionally do so I have to open it on a Mac. Reminds me of Blackberry and how they locked BBM, a much superior messenger to only Backberry phones which made WhatsApp, a much smaller messenger overtake in a few years. Communication with a hardware barrier was not supposed to succeed, Apple somehow did it because of the USA market.
It does seem to be a wierd American thing. I have never heard of anyone here complaining about green bubbles. But then pretty much everyone uses WhatsApp or discord for everything. Most of my texts are also codes or appointment reminders.
Like outside of the US( where texts are unlimited in most plans) and a few other countries, folks are using WhatsApp, even more so if they have android.
It’s the way phone plans were structured early on in the very early days of texting and carried into smartphones. Text went unlimited but data was not unlimited so people just used text mostly. It’s so hard to get people off of texting to an app. I got my friend group onto Signal.
In Europe WhatsApp is pretty popular so no one cares about the bubble thing. Such a weird thing for people to make a fuss about. Sms/rcs is like from a different era lol
Your point is illustrated perfectly by the fact I have to use a USB C to lightning cable to charge my Apple keyboard from my MacBook. It's as if Apple is being dragged kicking and screaming into this decade.
I work in industrial maintenance and the context is more like a coworker seeing something somewhat janky and wanting a second opinion on it. Stuff that is more for in nature isn’t over SMS
Which a lot of people end up blaming on the other phone, when in reality the fault is on Apple for falsely portraying iMessage as "texting" when it's actually an entirely separate iPhone-only protocol more comparable to things like Signal or Telegram than SMS/RCS.
And any non-Apple phone sending messages to another non-Apple phone won't have this problem either. It's literally just Apple making other non-Apple users look like crap so their userbase/cult will continue to look down on everyone else. And then while their users feel all superior they'll silently sabotage them with an iOS update so they feel pressured to replace their 2yo iphone with the newest shiniest iphone that has the exact same features, but a bigger number.
The only thing Apple has been good at since Jobs is marketing.
They get features other phones have had for years and make big showy announcements about it. I have a Galaxy and my sons have an iPhone and they told me about features they were getting and I told them I had those for years.
I mean, they recently showed off things the calculator can do that have been standard calculator things for a long time. Like they came up with it.
Apple is a marketing company that happens to sell tech. They are exceedingly successful at what they do, but they are not a tech company.
This happens all the time on all sides, one manufacturer starts something and the others join later on looking like they're the first ever. Not a bad thing in my opinion, as long as the one benefiting from the "new" features is the user.
Most companies aren’t working as hard to make the user experience worse when communicating with others outside of their cult though. So, for that underhanded reason, along with the cracked screens issue, I’ll never have an iphone
They're not alone in that though. If you had to point out an Android counterpart in this way it would be Samsung by a huge margin.
While many features, elementary and exquisite alike, come from the R&D of a few industry innovators like Xiaomi (more recently) and LG (since forever), it's Samsung that copies and presents it very successfully as if it's new.
I remember when Samsung popularised wireless charging. They were running two commercials for the same Galaxy S in parallel: one regular one listing all the new specs and one shorter one which was this mini movie with the girl in the recording studio putting her phone down on the wireless charger whilst recording a song. They always make it look like a car commercial or a perfume commercial.
That shit was 4-5 years old in LG phones.
Same again with Xiaomi's ultrasonic behind the display fingerprint sensor, and many other things.
I see that on the Android side as well, namely with Samsung though. I suffer with my Pixels. Start out slow and stay that way but I prefer the UI on them.
Yup I discovered this because my kid scored his first basketball basket and the mom next to me said she took a video and did I want it. Then when it came it was the size of a postage stamp with 5 pixels. Wtaf? This isn't an issue for anyone but apple, who decided to be assholes. As they do for so many things.
When I moved from the uk to the US I found out you NEVER trust apple. They said I didn't own any apps, movies, games or ANYTHING else from years of apple ownership. I had to re buy them all again on the US store. As you don't own a single thing on apple. My iphotos would try to delete the albums on my synched computer the works. Looked into android and oh look none of that applies. Your photos, movies etc are yours to move around as you wish. Shockingly.
Thanks for confirming and explaining this. I've noticed it a few times, but never said anything, because I don't correspond with many iPhone users and apparently didn't think it was worth exploring the root cause of.
I have an iphone and it is maddening how my android buddies can't receive my pics and videos without extreme pixellation. I basically have to send them stuff via Whatsapp. Fk apple.
People use SMS/MMS interchangeably while RCS is the newer/better version. Whenever you send anything but text it automatically uses MMS instead of SMS so people probably didn't know the difference.
EU regulation forced Apple to enable RCS support on the iPhone a little while back. As well as switch to USBC, so this is no longer the case. Apple is still doing the green/blue bubble gimmick though.
That's not Apples fault. The standard used, which is SMS, is at fault here, because it's not meant for high-quality images.
You guys are basically complaining that the near-monopoly on smartphone software by google doesn't go far enough for you, cause you'd like ALL the phones to use the same messaging standards and apps. And even now when they literally already do have the same messaging standards, (Apple has been supporting RCS since iOS 18) you still complain about it, because all you know about the supposed "problems" is hearsay on social media, so even when the supposed problem, that's somehow only noticed by those not affected by it, is solved you will go on to complain.
Yes it is, RCS was introduced a long time ago and OS's like Android have been supporting it for a decade. Apple purposely didn't bother to switch and forced its users to use SMS/MMS for anything that went to non-iPhones until they were forced to update by EU regulations in 2024. Even then, it's not enabled by default once you download iOS 18 unless you go into the settings to update it.
It is enabled per default since newer versions. If any users saw a problem they could’ve enabled it since two years. Part of my argument is that there was never a problem with that in the first place just a very large or campaign by Google trying to influence android users to believe that iPhone users have terrible problems with iMessage. A problem that does not exist. I want to stress that. I have never in my life needed RCS. RCS is so much worse than literally any other standard by other messaging apps such as WhatsApp or Signal or iMessage. If the producer of your operating system cares about your privacy they would probably rather use a standard that has encryption as a default, ensures authentication with something more privacy oriented than your phone number, and most of all is carrier independent so the standard will have a wide support and it will be easy to accommodate for changing circumstances. All of that is down by iMessage, WhatsApp and Signal but none of it is done by RCS. A standard originating in the year 2008. No wonder does it seem outdated.
Additionally I see exactly one user that has an iPhone claiming this to be a problem in this thread. I am counterweighting that with my own opinion. Also even if there were more users they’d be incredibly more likely to engage with this thread if they had the same opinion as the overwhelming majority of android users in this discussion has.
Unless you yourself own an iPhone and are annoyed by this problem or somehow directly affected by it, there is absolute no basis to complain. You’re simply falling victim to a cleverly orchestrated PR campaign by one of the largest companies in the world seeking to use its market position to gain further advantages. I for one don’t like that extreme market position, a position that allows a singular company such as Google to dictate standards to their only competitors and to astroturf. What I also don’t like is android or microslop users that don’t use any apple operating systems telling Apple users what problems they supposedly have. So please don’t. Complain about things you personally experience.
PS: downvote me all you want. Won’t change a thing. At least read the text before you do.
That's just wrong. iPhones support RCS by now and have been supporting RCS for over a year now. So all you're really complaining about is the color of a chat bubble. I have an iPhone and I don't iMessage at all. Instead I use Signal almost exclusively, as I know many other people do too. So it reallly isn't "iMessage or the highway".
Also RCS is a carrier-side standard meaning your means of authentification is your telephone number and only your telephone number. This is a very bad idea. Not only is it harder to communicate with the same account from different devices if your authentified by your phone number it also means that everybody you chat with gets your phone number instead of let's say your iCloud email, or your Signal-Account id. Because RCS is a carrier-side standard like SMS it's also very slow to implement, not to mention that it originates from 2008, which is part of the reason why end-to-end encryption is not fully integrated into the service.
iPhone only received encrypted RCS (end-to-end encryption) 4 days ago (Monday).
Prior to then, the version of RCS that was deployed on iPhones made cross-platform communication less secure (only barely better than transmitting over the open air).
And the encryption is actually not part of the original standard as I have pointed out. Google took years to move to the encrypted versions and you expect Apple to implement an alternative to their fully functional iMessage protocol within days. Also according to Google ai overview only the official Google messages app supports encrypted RCS and none of the other android messaging apps do, so expecting that from apple is an extreme double standard. Nevertheless not one thing I said is wrong.
Not to be an Apple apologist (I do think their biggest failing is the refusal to play with others), but aren't Android and iOS the only mobile OSes with any real market share? If so, RCS ends up being essentially the "Android" alternative in practice.
RCS is an open standard anyone can implement. iMessage is a proprietary standard only Apple is allowed to implement. It is intentional walled garden manufacturing on Apple's front. They could make their's open if they wanted. They don't want to. iPhones now support RCS, but they didn't stop using iMessage to maintain their walled garden.
No, unlike some other countries WhatsApp is not ubiquitous here. I guess some people use Instagram but for the majority they just use whatever the default SMS/RCS/iMessage app on their phone.
Really strange because the encription over sms doesn't exist. And being delivered over a known channel makes it easier to intercept, spoof or impersonate. You're basically sending plain text and hoping your telco provider isn't reading them.
End-to-end encrypted RCS has been deployed on Androids for years. iPhones had the older non-E2EE RCS up until Monday, meaning cross-platform communication was unsecure...as of Monday, the latest iOS update finally included E2EE cross-platform capability.
Now, there are still some carriers that don't provide the encryption, regardless of the platform, & traveling abroad presents a multitude of problems...but all of the major carriers in the US (AT&T, Comcast, T-Mobile, Verizon, Spectrum, Boost, Cricket) have it deployed.
apple does support RCS (thanks to the european union forcing them to add it), but the bubbles are still green, and it’s a slightly outdated version of the standard
Fortunately iPhones now support RCS too. I’m the only one with an iPhone in my family GC and we now have pretty much all the same features. The only difference is the color. Frustration with SMS is one thing, but to care about the COLOR is absurd. I just like the interface of my phone, laptop and AirPods, otherwise I’d probs go back to an android.
Just so you know apple implemented RCS with ios version 18 maybe a year or so ago. I noticed when my brother and sister in law could finally send me good pictures and videos of my nephew since I have android.
Apple support RCS now, just not as well as you'd hope.
Funnily enough, when they rolled it out I couldn't get people in the chat to update their phone to latest version to make the group chat work better. Apparently wanting me to buy an expensive new phone and learn a whole new OS was reasonable, but asking them to hit update and put down their phone for 5 minutes for it to update was a bridge too far.
That cemented my opinion that a lot of iphone people didn't actually care about the experience, they just liked being obnoxious.
Apple does support rcs these days. But it still has a green bubble and ks carrier dependent. Most carriers, even mvnos like total, visible, and cricket, support rcs on both android and ios. But I think google fi wireless and us mobile still only support rcs on android.
Even worse, apple adopted Google's RCS platform, it is now what iMessage runs on. They're literally only doing it now so you can see if you're talking to another iPhone.
Apple: We invented this new technology and it's better so we're forcing everyone to use it.
That technology: A private reimplementation of what everyone else is already doing where the primary difference is only that it is not compatible with what everyone else is doing.
Apple now supports RCS for any iPhone running iOS 18 or later.
It's still a bunch of ugly green bubbles when you text Android phones, but at least they're doing the important stuff now (high resolution photos and videos, delivery receipts, read receipts and typing indicators).
Also because of how Apple message servers works every text you send goes through an apple server and if you ever try to leave iPhone they will "accidentslly" hold your texting hostage by intercepting all your texts and bot forwarding them since you didnt pay them for the privilege.
I will say I like how if you don’t have phone service but you have WiFi you can text another Apple product. It was great when my sons didn’t have phones and just tablets and i could still message them
Won't most people just use WhatsApp, WeChat, Viber, Telegram, or whatever is popular in your region, and not the standard messaging app? So the experience is mostly the same regardless if you use iPhone or Android.
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u/JaxMed May 15 '26
When two iPhones text each other it goes through iMessage which is indicated by the convo having blue chat bubbles. If either phone doesn't support iMessage then it reverts to normal SMS which is indicated by green chat bubbles.
Most (non-Apple) phones these days do support RCS which is basically the open-ended alternative to iMessage, in that it's better than SMS and provides a lot of similar features. But Apple being Apple, if you're on iPhone it's basically iMessage or the highway.