1 more than me bud
Anywho, it is the fact that iMessage falls back to SMS that is a winner. BBM is meh.
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Android's answer to iMessage/BBM?
- Thread starter Bugeyeblue
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1 more than me bud
Anywho, it is the fact that iMessage falls back to SMS that is a winner. BBM is meh.
I have never used iMessage, so i don't know how the SMS fallback works, but Hangouts does do SMS as well. You use the toggle near the top to determine whether you want to send an sMS message or hangouts message.
The rub is that you do not need a phone number to have a hangouts account, so the option is not always available (i.e. you have someone's gmail account info but not their phone number).
Basically with iMessage you send a text from the messaging app. It nearly immediately determines if the number or email account is an iOS device or Mac then sends the message accordingly be it iMessage data or SMS.
If you have a poor data connection and trying to send a large pic or video and it fails you'll be given the option to try again or send as SMS. If it's a small text it will automatically fallback to SMS.
You don't need a phone number for iMessage either as it can work from an iPad or Mac. The limitation on those devices is you can only send to other iOS devices or Mac's since SMS requires a phone number.
The beauty of iMessage is the out of the box use. You use it just like any stock messaging app and it does the rest. There's no need to confuse people telling them to download this or that app and how to set it up. Plus it sync seamlessly across other Apple products. If I were to turn on my Mac when I get home iMessages throughout the day will be there and I can reply and it will be coming from my phone number.
It works well for me (see sig) since nearly all my friends and family use iOS devices and all my co workers do. I can see why it would be useless to many though. Damn proprietary software.
Everything is proprietary. Difference being everything else is cross platform compatible.
I think if an iMessage app was released on competing phones it would be extremely popular.
Apple is a hardware company though. Device sales is their bread and butter. I don't think anyone can really blame them not allowing competing devices to use their servers ($$$) for free.
The problem I've always had with apps like "whatsapp" versus using the stock option on the iPhone is that (1) a big reason I'm on an iPhone is because my family and friends are all on iPhones and (2) I don't want to have to go to each of them and tell them to install a secondary messaging app they've never heard of so we can text over wifi. When I was going through my Android phase, I had my wife install Hangouts so we can text via wifi (we have crappy cell service in our house). She remembered to use it every now and then, but most of the time she just used what she always used with everyone else.
A good stock option is always the way to go imo.
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Heh, so a $1.99 iMessage app on Android.....would be an interesting prospect. Same as the rumors of an iTunes app for Android.
The SMS fallback is in a different thread though. With iMessage you can carry over your conversation in one thread seamless deciding between SMS and iMessage which the phone decides depending on your connection type(data-iMessage, SMS-no data)
How so?
Switch between them without problem. I guess I'm "mildly" tech savvy but turning off iMessage isn't exactly rocket science...
Search the Apple forums. Lots of people not receiving SMS even after "deactivating" iMessage (which is not always possible BTW).
It doesn't matter how tech savvy you are.
I know they are all proprietary. Someone was complaining about iMessage being proprietary. So I was curious what open solution he was using. Cross platform and proprietary have nothing to do with each other.
Hangouts now comes standard on all Android devices, and anyone upgrading the old stock Talk App will get hangouts. the only people who need to make an effort to download it are iphone/ipad users.
Other than that, it works via any Javascript-capable web browser. You do need to download a plugin if you want to use the webcam to video chat from your web browser
The biggest difference between imessage and say whats or hangouts, is that it seamlessly is built into the messages app. Most people that use imessage dont even know they are using it, and if it switches from data to sms its in the same thread.
Most people that don't like it being only for apple, I totally get it, but iMessage is really a great product with the way its built.
International I know people use the crap out of WhatsApp, but it would be really hard in the U.S to get everyone I know to use that app, everyone uses their phones messaging app usually.
Most people that don't like it being only for apple, I totally get it, but iMessage is really a great product with the way its built.
International I know people use the crap out of WhatsApp, but it would be really hard in the U.S to get everyone I know to use that app, everyone uses their phones messaging app usually.
Pick an arbitrary app, give it a name, then release it as "Beta"; it matters not a jot, as the app, the name AND the functionality will change next month.
Trust me, I've seen the threads however overall it's a relatively rare occurrence. And I believe most if not all of those people got it to work. Or they settled with never getting an text message for the rest of their lives?
For me (small statistic I know) it's been a non issue and I've done it a couple dozen times.
I'm not saying iMessage is the end all be all of text messaging. Just in general it works very well.
Trust me, I've seen the threads however overall it's a relatively rare occurrence. And I believe most if not all of those people got it to work. Or they settled with never getting an text message for the rest of their lives?
For me (small statistic I know) it's been a non issue and I've done it a couple dozen times.
I'm not saying iMessage is the end all be all of text messaging. Just in general it works very well.
Well, it happened to me so I am sure it happens to a lot of other people because of their poor implementation.
All the basic features of Facebook chat and the hangouts features derived from GTalk work using XMPP, which is opensource.
A subset of features from both types of chat do not work using XMPP.
There is. It is called Hangouts.
FaceTime doesn't work across platforms. If everyone you want to video call with has an iPhone, then FaceTime is all you need. If there are people who don't have an iPhone, but some other phone, then you cannot use FaceTime. If iPhone users want to make a video call with someone without an iPhone, they will have to use something else.
Hangout chats and SMS chats are now merged, i know that was one of the bugbears with Hangouts.
http://www.androidpolice.com/2014/0...chats-widget-new-sound-and-more-apk-download/
http://www.androidpolice.com/2014/0...chats-widget-new-sound-and-more-apk-download/
The update is a long time coming, but it's still a bit underwhelming.
The part of iMessage that everyone liked was that it would auto-select which to use: iMessage or SMS and if iMessage failed it would auto-retry with SMS.
With this update the conversations are merged, but you still have to select which you want to use.
I say this makes it a step up, but still not as good as iMessage is ... maybe a bit more refinement and FINALLY including wifi calling will get it there
The part of iMessage that everyone liked was that it would auto-select which to use: iMessage or SMS and if iMessage failed it would auto-retry with SMS.
With this update the conversations are merged, but you still have to select which you want to use.
I say this makes it a step up, but still not as good as iMessage is ... maybe a bit more refinement and FINALLY including wifi calling will get it there
I don't know anyone that uses whatsapp. Not a single soul.
It's either Facebook messenger, hangouts or imessage.
Obviously in a minority here but I use mostly good old fashioned SMS and BBM. Even though I use an Iphone I seem to know a lot of people using Blackberry devices. Occasionally an sms gets sent as an imessage but never intentionally use it. I use SKYPE extensively for international calls.
Yup, same here, though I'd add pretty much the vast majority non-iPhone users I communicate with still just send standard SMS/MMS. My understanding is that WhatsApp sees far greater usage outside of the US. I also still have very little interaction with anyone on Hangouts, though as I've admitted numerous times, the great majority of my mobile communication seems to be with other iPhone users.