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?
Wait, so people decide on a phone based of OS because of blue or green chat message colors? This is the first time I’m hearing this, is this something more of a USA thing or does this apply to other ocuntries as well?
Buying a phone based on chat bubble color seems something that occurs in a toxic society, where you are judged based on phone model. And why do they then change to an other platform to write you?
I never had a discussion about Andriod or IPhone based on this parameter, it was more about UI, services and design of the phone. To be fair we all use third party messengers like Signal or Threema.
It’s a US thing. It took european carriers a very long time to offer unlimited texts (especially across borders) which in turn helped apps like Whatsapp, Signal, Telegram. iPhones display messages/SMS from non-iPhones in green bubbles. Pictures sent from non-iPhones are displayed in lower resolutions because Apple doesn’t support some standard or smth.
The standard is RCS
Googles standard is RCS, just like Apples is iMessage. Apple is never going to implement a competitors standard. And despite being open, not even all of android has adopted this standard. Only a couple apps have.
It’s not about the color of the bubbles, it’s about SMS vs. iMessage. SMS/MMS is outdated, slow, and limited; nobody should be using it anymore. iMessage is fast and feature-rich; arguably the best chat platform that exists, but it only works from one Apple device to another. Apple uses its position (50 percent of the U.S. smartphone market) to alienate anyone not using their hardware by rolling back to SMS when communicating with a non-iOS/MacOS device. This happens behind the scenes, all directly from the same Messages application. So from the iPhone user’s perspective, they’re either getting a fantastic experience (blue bubbles) or the absolute worst one (green bubbles) and it’s all dependent on what the other person is using.
It’s by design. Apple wants the default experience between an iPhone and an Android to be uncomfortable. And getting 125 million American iPhone users to use a different chat application is impossible since they have a truly premium experience with iMessage to iMessage communication.
Here’s a great explanation of it.