Only on 6 Plus (until iOS 9 which will bring it to the 6 as well).What's really strange is I don't remember seeing these "initial bubbles" until I recently (3 days ago) upgraded from a 6 to a 6+. Yes, both devices were on 8.4. Is it just my Alzheimer's kicking in? Is it only on the 6+ ? More than likely I probably just filtered them out of my mind.
When it doesn't add anything to someone why might they not want to disable that? Seems like a fairly straightforward thing to offer an option for that.
Not everyone cares for or wants photos for contacts. They already have a longstanding option for these photo thumbnails when it comes to Favorites in the Phone app, so this wouldn't even be a new option really.
It's a preference. Some might not care about it, others might, doesn't really make it an issue per se, but doesn't mean it's nothing just because some don't care.
That's what the option was always for, the favorites in the phone app as I mentioned before, which have been there for quite a few iOS versions. An existing option for something that was expanded to be now used in Messages and instead of bringing out that option to be a more general one so that it would apply to the phone app and messages app or having a similar option for the messages app they just took away the existing one on top of it all.
Of course it's an existing option that can be expanded, it's there in iOS 8 which is still the latest public version. I don't think any conclusions one way or another can be drawn about it--perhaps theories but nothing to indicate what is more or less likely. The end result is that instead of making that option apply to other areas where they expanded the use of the photo thumbnails they apparently will be completely taking it away, and less choices for consumers isn't really a better thing (again, at least for those beyind the lowest common denominator, as much of those that might be there).
Right, thus the unfortunate part of not only not gaining controls over something, but even losing already existing controls over that very thing on a slightly different screen.
Fairly certain that's the main place where those get used given that they were there from many iOS versions ago and no other place for favorites really existed until recently when they became available as an option in the app switcher (and will be removed from there in iOS 9).
Given that old ways have been there for a long time and many typical users don't even know about the app switcher or don't really use it, it can easily be argued that the new way that is in a somewhat odd location is the one that hasn't been getting used much at all and is being removed completely after just a short time while the old way that has been there for years is still there even in iOS 9.
We all have them!