iMessage Hell Discussion: Tips and Tricks

[AustinIllini]

Without a doubt, Apple's single greatest services is iMessage. Apple's foresight to tie together iPhones with blue dots was a stroke of genius.

Getting out of the ecosystem lock of iMessage can be a challenge. A number of reviewers admit that they can't go to Android for fear of getting into iMessage hell.

While generally speaking, there is no wholesale replacement for iMessage, I figured we could discuss how we handle messages on Android.

Now and in the past, I have always defaulted to Pushbullet. As far as I can tell, that appears to be the best tool I have seen to replicate the ability to answer your texts and phone on other devices.

For group messaging, it's Facebook chat for me. The reality is, everyone has it. All my family, friends, and others begrudgingly use facebook chat.

Looking for any other ideas. Also, has anyone struggled to get or send texts after switching?

 

[woodynorman]

I have the Mysms app on both my Note 8 and my iPad. I actively use the samsung messaging app on my phone though. Mysms is just running in the background. All my texts instantly go to the Mysms app on my iPad (and iMac)

 

[Roadstar]

WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger work for me, it’s hard to someone who’s not on either one here. What comes to iMessage, it was a ghost town for me and I’ve had it disabled even when my main SIM is in my iPhone.

 

[5105973]

I have the added complication of being committed to using Apple Watches so I’m pretty much stuck on two tracks, two lines...one for Android and one for iOS and iMessage. If I could get my messages on the Android line to come to my Apple Watch, that would be great, but I don’t know how to do it.

I’ve kept in touch with iMessage users via plain SMS inside the Textra app before. It was not the most graceful solution. Facebook and WhatsApp are something i and other contacts are gradually abandoning. Especially FB.

 

[Roadstar]

I’ve kept in touch with iMessage users via plain SMS inside the Textra app before. It was not the most graceful solution. Facebook and WhatsApp are something i and other contacts are gradually abandoning. Especially FB.

So you've moved to plain SMS from WhatsApp and FB or did I misunderstand something? At least I send too many images in my messages to consider falling back to MMS for that as the quality gets butchered way too badly. Group conversations are also a bit too clunky on SMS (and possibly also costly depending on your SMS plan). I understand why people don't like the FB connection both Messenger (well, obviously) and WhatsApp have, but unfortunately there aren't too many good cross-platform alternatives right now. Of course, any alternative would also need its critical mass of users to become viable.

 

[AustinIllini]

We're kind of burying the actual story and I was thinking about this last night. This entire issue could be fixed if Google would just merge messages and allo.

 

[cube]

BBM is good, cross platform, and used by many millions of people.

 

[Roadstar]

BBM is good, cross platform, and used by many millions of people.

I think that's also regional like the heavy iMessage use in the US is. At least I haven't seen anyone, i.e. not a single person use BBM in Finland.
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We're kind of burying the actual story and I was thinking about this last night. This entire issue could be fixed if Google would just merge messages and allo.

That would be a start. It would also help if they had an attention span that exceeds that of a goldfish with whatever solution they come up with. Currently at least I'm not that eager to adopt yet another Google messaging solution, as they've most likely killed it before I've had even 25% of my contacts to try it.

 

[tbayrgs]

We're kind of burying the actual story and I was thinking about this last night. This entire issue could be fixed if Google would just merge messages and allo.

I think it was the Android Central podcast last week that had this very discussion, specifically in regards to Allo/Duo. What it comes straight down to is unless Google integrates SMS with Allo, says a big ‘**** you’ to the carriers and makes it the default messaging solution on Android, Google will never replicate what Apple has with iMessage. And Google simply won’t go this route, I suspect primarily due to the anti-trust attention it would draw.

 

[cube]

I think that's also regional like the heavy iMessage use in the US is. At least I haven't seen anyone, i.e. not a single person use BBM in Finland.

I imagine that Finland would have been one of the countries with the lowest BlackBerry penetration.

Although I think that many of the huge number of new users added when BBM became multiplatform probably never had a BlackBerry.

By 2015 it had reached 190 million users.

 

[lcs101]

We're kind of burying the actual story and I was thinking about this last night. This entire issue could be fixed if Google would just merge messages and allo.

Really don't understand why the WhatsApp or Allo don't have SMS fallback.

 

[5105973]

So you've moved to plain SMS from WhatsApp and FB or did I misunderstand something? At least I send too many images in my messages to consider falling back to MMS for that as the quality gets butchered way too badly. Group conversations are also a bit too clunky on SMS (and possibly also costly depending on your SMS plan). I understand why people don't like the FB connection both Messenger (well, obviously) and WhatsApp have, but unfortunately there aren't too many good cross-platform alternatives right now. Of course, any alternative would also need its critical mass of users to become viable.

Honestly I completely gave up on the idea of ever trying to keep in touch with the other parents from school, most of whom are exclusively on iMessage, on any other platform than iMessage. I will never walk away from iPhones as long as I have to coordinate activities with other parents and our youngest kids.

My solution is no solution at all. I keep one line dedicated to my iPhone and Apple Watch and another line dedicated to Android (currently my S8+). We parents have to coordinate so many different meet ups on the fly and can’t afford to lose messages to slowdowns between platforms and operating systems. We have one school friend who is Indian and has to be on Android due to her international travels. She is part of our group chats but sometimes we have to call her due to delays or uncertainty that she received the messages.

 

[Roadstar]

Honestly I completely gave up on the idea of ever trying to keep in touch with the other parents from school, most of whom are exclusively on iMessage, on any other platform than iMessage. I will never walk away from iPhones as long as I have to coordinate activities with other parents and our youngest kids.

My solution is no solution at all. I keep one line dedicated to my iPhone and Apple Watch and another line dedicated to Android (currently my S8+). We parents have to coordinate so many different meet ups on the fly and can’t afford to lose messages to slowdowns between platforms and operating systems. We have one school friend who is Indian and has to be on Android due to her international travels. She is part of our group chats but sometimes we have to call her due to delays or uncertainty that she received the messages.

The same thing is one of the reasons I use WhatsApp even though I'm quite often not happy with the actions of its parent company. A vast majority of group communication over here takes place in WhatsApp as it's available on all relevant platforms (even Windows Phone, which had some traction here before it died) and you can switch platforms and still remain connected on the same app. As I'm now playing for the 8th season in my beer league hockey team, I've noticed that the amount of iPhones in the locker room has gone down quite significantly over the last two or three years, so I guess we have Apple's ever-increasing Euro pricing to thank for that. Naturally that's one of the reasons iMessage hasn't really caught up here, as no one wants to communicate with only a fraction of the people they know especially when an option that covers almost everyone is also available.

 

[5105973]

The same thing is one of the reasons I use WhatsApp even though I'm quite often not happy with the actions of its parent company. A vast majority of group communication over here takes place in WhatsApp as it's available on all relevant platforms (even Windows Phone, which had some traction here before it died) and you can switch platforms and still remain connected on the same app. As I'm now playing for the 8th season in my beer league hockey team, I've noticed that the amount of iPhones in the locker room has gone down quite significantly over the last two or three years, so I guess we have Apple's ever-increasing Euro pricing to thank for that. Naturally that's one of the reasons iMessage hasn't really caught up here, as no one wants to communicate with only a fraction of the people they know especially when an option that covers almost everyone is also available.

Apple has badly neglected vast markets in Europe and is focusing more on Asia and China in particular. It is good that you’re using more independent services because Apple’s presence in your country may very well continue to shrink.

I worry our kids will think Apple is everything and then get a rude shock when they go out into the world and see even in the United States there is a world of Android devices in use.

iMessage offers many advantages to those of us who use it. It’s easy to share video and picture files in their best quality, for example. There are options for stickers and payments and that sort of thing.

The problem with something like WhatsApp is that you have to convince all of your contacts to install it. Happy iMessage users just won’t, not when iMessage works automatically for them. Or even if they do install if, they won’t check their WhatsApp messages often enough. And everyone has to agree to use WhatsApp. Just a couple of holdouts will end it all.

 

[Hustler1337]

Can anyone explain to me why users like the OP complain about not having an iMessage equivalent on Android? What is so special about it that a third-party service cannot provide? Are you referring to the SMS fallback that iMessage has built in?

 

[Roadstar]

iMessage offers many advantages to those of us who use it. It’s easy to share video and picture files in their best quality, for example. There are options for stickers and payments and that sort of thing.

The problem with something like WhatsApp is that you have to convince all of your contacts to install it. Happy iMessage users just won’t, not when iMessage works automatically for them. Or even if they do install if, they won’t check their WhatsApp messages often enough. And everyone has to agree to use WhatsApp. Just a couple of holdouts will end it all.

Yeah well the same quality advantages apply also to WhatsApp and here it's pretty much the de facto messaging solution. I resisted it for quite long as their security track record was poor at the start, but once they improved to a satisfactory level, I jumped onboard to finally catch up with my team's discussions and local Pokemon Go groups. It's true that iMessage is automatic, but being restricted to Apple devices, it's almost useless here as pretty much everyone has a significant amount of friends on Android where iMessage doesn't work at all, so people just opt for WhatsApp instead.

 

[5105973]

Can anyone explain to me why users like the OP complain about not having an iMessage equivalent on Android? What is so special about it that a third-party service cannot provide? Are you referring to the SMS fallback that iMessage has built in?

The third party services must all be downloaded and installed by all of your contacts. If most of your contacts are iMessage users, they simply won’t agree to move to a neutral third party platform like WhatsApp. At least in many parts of the US. We can of course do group chats on SMS with Android users.

But if it is a person who has transitioned from iOS to Android after group texts have been formed in iOS, it usually is necessary for people to delete the chat that the new Android user has participated in, because of some weird issue that prevents the Android phone from receiving any new texts generated within the group chat. Some groups resent doing this and losing the shared history of their discussions and some will refuse. The person who now is on SMS may find they simply no longer get messages generated inside the group chat.

Even if they unregister their phone number from Apple. Many people have described this particular limbo on this forum. I did not lose SMS messages but I did get a lot of people confessing their relief I was back on iMessage after a couple of months in which I used my HTC 10 exclusively and had no iPhone in use. They had an irrational or illogical aversion to communicating with someone who is a green bubble person. And not without reason, I guess. Sometimes there were delays and without read receipts they could not be assured I’d seen their texts at all.

 

[tbayrgs]

Can anyone explain to me why users like the OP complain about not having an iMessage equivalent on Android? What is so special about it that a third-party service cannot provide? Are you referring to the SMS fallback that iMessage has built in?

First, this discussion seems far more relevant to the US where iMessage has by far the greatest usage and no single third party app has as significant use. SMS/MMS is basically a free option here and has been for a long time so that is what the overwhelming majority of consumers use by default. Apple took advantage of this early on by integrating iMessage with SMS on the iPhone so it’s users don’t have to change anything in their usage patterns, being able to reach everyone and having all of the benefits added by iMessage whenever they’re interacting with another iPhone user (a very significant portion of smartphone users in the US). This is the ‘iMessage’ lock-in. Moving to Android means having a comparatively compromised messaging experience.

I would love a situation similar to many other parts of the world where a majority use a third party solution like WhatsApp but that’s just not happening here. Consequently, some of us often pine for Google to implement a similar messaging solution on Android because it could actually supersede iMessage’s dominance since they have no qualms about making it cross platform. Where iMessage users can message anyone thanks to the SMS fallback, they only see the added benefits when interacting with other iPhone users. A version of Allo as the default messaging app on Android with SMS fallback would create a similar experience for Android users that iPhone users have had for years.

 

[convergent]

I haven't really experienced any ill effects of ditching my iPhone, and nearly everyone I communicate with including my whole family has iPhones. We use GroupMe for an ongoing family discussion and have also used it with a Church group we communicate with. But also having group messages via SMS with mixed iPhones in it seems to have worked fine so far. I actually enjoy the lack of "read" showing up because it has caused a lot of problems if I choose to to reply to someone.

 

[Hustler1337]

The third party services must all be downloaded and installed by all of your contacts. If most of your contacts are iMessage users, they simply won’t agree to move to a neutral third party platform like WhatsApp. At least in many parts of the US. We can of course do group chats on SMS with Android users.

But if it is a person who has transitioned from iOS to Android after group texts have been formed in iOS, it usually is necessary for people to delete the chat that the new Android user has participated in, because of some weird issue that prevents the Android phone from receiving any new texts generated within the group chat. Some groups resent doing this and losing the shared history of their discussions and some will refuse. The person who now is on SMS may find they simply no longer get messages generated inside the group chat.

Even if they unregister their phone number from Apple. Many people have described this particular limbo on this forum. I did not lose SMS messages but I did get a lot of people confessing their relief I was back on iMessage after a couple of months in which I used my HTC 10 exclusively and had no iPhone in use. They had an irrational or illogical aversion to communicating with someone who is a green bubble person. And not without reason, I guess. Sometimes there were delays and without read receipts they could not be assured I’d seen their texts at all.

So it's basically down to iMessages being incompatible with non-iOS devices and users being unwilling to move over to another service because they've invested their chat history into iMessages.

Sadly, it's a trap users fall into when people start using default apps, not realising how it may impact them or others in the future. Nothing users can do really, except when new group chats are created or conversations started, they should avoid using the Messages app on iOS and use a platform-agnostic service such as WhatsApp or Telegram. It needs to start somewhere though to get the wheels turning as otherwise people will just keep locking themselves into iMessage and refuse to change over for the reasons you've given.

First, this discussion seems far more relevant to the US where iMessage has by far the greatest usage and no single third party app has as significant use. SMS/MMS is basically a free option here and has been for a long time so that is what the overwhelming majority of consumers use by default. Apple took advantage of this early on by integrating iMessage with SMS on the iPhone so it’s users don’t have to change anything in their usage patterns, being able to reach everyone and having all of the benefits added by iMessage whenever they’re interacting with another iPhone user (a very significant portion of smartphone users in the US). This is the ‘iMessage’ lock-in. Moving to Android means having a comparatively compromised messaging experience.

I would love a situation similar to many other parts of the world where a majority use a third party solution like WhatsApp but that’s just not happening here. Consequently, some of us often pine for Google to implement a similar messaging solution on Android because it could actually supersede iMessage’s dominance since they have no qualms about making it cross platform. Where iMessage users can message anyone thanks to the SMS fallback, they only see the added benefits when interacting with other iPhone users. A version of Allo as the default messaging app on Android with SMS fallback would create a similar experience for Android users that iPhone users have had for years.

I didn't realise how popular iMessage is in the US. In the UK at least, WhatsApp has a massive presence with almost everyone having the app installed by default. It's always been amongst the top 3 installed apps on the App Store and Play Store. That's not to say iMessage isn't popular here either but I guess people here are far more open to using WhatsApp here than perhaps the US.

I'd say most chats are initiated via WhatsApp, more so for group chats here than anything else which is a good thing because of cross-platform compatibility. What I don't understand is why more users in the US don't use third-party services than those outside of the US because I know for sure that there's a good representation of non-iOS users in the US like everywhere else. Do iOS users in the US only chat with iOS users and not get along with Android users or something?

 

[tbayrgs]

I'd say most chats are initiated via WhatsApp, more so for group chats here than anything else which is a good thing because of cross-platform compatibility. What I don't understand is why more users in the US don't use third-party services than those outside of the US because I know for sure that there's a good representation of non-iOS users in the US like everywhere else. Do iOS users in the US only chat with iOS users and not get along with Android users or something?

I think has nearly 40% market share in the US and at least from experience, iPhone users seem to ‘flock together’. For instance, I’d guess more than 90% of my regular messaging is done with other iOS users. Consequently, moving away from iOS has significant impact.

And as for why we don’t use more third party apps—as I previously mentioned, with SMS being free for just about everybody for many years now, it’s ubiquitous so most users just don’t feel a need to move away. And we don’t only chat with iOS users—iMessage will just fallback to SMS for Android phones. Most Android messaging in the US is just SMS as well. Nothing ever pushed us away from it, sadly.

 

[Roadstar]

And we don’t only chat with iOS users—iMessage will just fallback to SMS for Android phones. Most Android messaging in the US is just SMS as well. Nothing ever pushed us away from it, sadly.

Don't you ever send images? The quality degratation with MMS should be more than a good reason to look for alternative means of communication.

 

[koigirl]

I don't see any issues with WhatsApp except for talking friends and family into downloading the app? What are the other complaints about messaging with WhatsApp other than the fact it doesn't synch with iPad and Mac except through the web method? Just curious...

 

[AustinIllini]

I don't see any issues with WhatsApp except for talking friends and family into downloading the app? What are the other complaints about messaging with WhatsApp other than the fact it doesn't synch with iPad and Mac except through the web method? Just curious...

None of my friends or family use whatsapp. A messaging solution in my world doesn't require everyone to download an App.

 

[Klyster]

I use WhatsApp for international calls and video calling to family and for photo and video.
For everyday messages I use messages.
Only my sister has an iPhone, everyone else has an Android.
A messaging solution imo shouldn't need to be brand exclusive.