It’s straightforward to imagine that Android units are inferior as a result of they’ll’t ship video by way of text to iPhones, however that’s not the case and it’s about to alter.
Q: Why don’t some Android customers get my iPhone text messages?
A: Text messaging was as soon as thought-about an anti-social communication methodology by those that grew up having telephone conversations as their default.
Fast ahead to 2023 and everybody realizes how environment friendly and helpful text messaging has turn into and, in lots of instances, making a telephone name as an alternative of texting is now thought-about a nuisance.
The unique methodology of texting, generally known as SMS (Short Message Service) began to switch pagers within the ’90s and grew in recognition from there.
SMS had many limitations, beginning with the should be linked to a mobile community to work. It additionally offered no encryption, so your messages had been despatched in plain text.
As the expansion of smartphone images exploded, methods to ship photos by way of a messaging app began to emerge reminiscent of MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) and Apple’s iMessage, which launched in 2011.
iMessage allowed iPhone customers to ship and obtain photos and video to one another over mobile or Wi-Fi connections with encryption, an enormous enchancment over SMS and MMS on the time.
Apple has at all times constructed partitions across the iPhone in an effort to persuade Android customers to modify, so at the same time as new business requirements developed, the iPhone messaging remained in its “walled backyard.”
To at the present time, iMessage is the default for iPhone customers, which might trigger an inoperability situation when speaking with non-iPhone customers, particularly in group messages. The main situation is when it sends one thing to an Android person, it kicks down into SMS or MMS, that are each archaic.
Depending upon the setting in your iPhone, messages that you just ship to Android telephones could by no means make it out.
Conversely, iPhone customers who’re despatched a video from an Android gadget normally get a really low-resolution model of the video as a result of the units don’t use the identical messaging protocols.
It’s straightforward to imagine that Android units are inferior as a result of they’ll’t ship video by way of text to iPhones, however that’s not the case and it’s about to alter.
Apple will lastly relent
After over a decade of resistance, Apple has lastly introduced that it’s going to be part of the RCS (Rich Communication Services) commonplace supported by the remainder of the business someday in 2024.
iMessage will proceed to be the first messaging platform, it’ll merely swap to the RCS commonplace when sending and receiving from non-iPhone units.
This shall be an enormous win for each Android and iPhone customers who ship a number of photos and movies to a wide range of family and friends.
In the meantime
While the world waits for this blissful occasion to happen, there are a few workarounds you need to use.
The first step is to verify your iPhone has MMS Messaging turned on by going to Settings > Messages. Remember, to ship MMS or SMS messages, you have to be linked to a mobile community or have Wi-Fi calling turned on.
Most of the world has adopted WhatsApp as a substitute, which eliminates the compatibility points imposed by the present scenario.
You may use Facebook Messenger, Snapchat or Signal till Apple lastly activates the RCS swap.
Ken Colburn is founder and CEO of Data Doctors Computer Services. Ask any tech query on Facebook or X.
https://wtop.com/tech/2023/11/data-doctors-the-problem-with-iphone-android-text-messaging/
