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speedyraf

macrumors regular
Original poster
Oct 10, 2007
106
64
My cellphone carrier says I should turn off iMessage and leave SMS/MMS/group on. When I do that, my group messages keep saying "failed, try again" but when I re-enabled iMessage, my group text went out properly. I'm using wi-fi (only time I normally send them) and have data turned off, but that's another story. What am I missing here as my iPhone iOS is up to date, with plenty of storage available, etc. Thanks.
 
SMS messages won’t go out through wifi, you need to be connected to a cellular network to use them. Why would you want to turn iMessage off though. SMS is old technology and doesn‘t even consistently support group messaging.
 
No one mentioned that fact about SMS to me. You're saying iMessage uses wi-fi and SMS goes over a cellular network? Does that mean if iMessage isn't available, a text would go out through SMS? This stuff still confuses me. Thanks.
 
SMS messages won’t go out through wifi, you need to be connected to a cellular network to use them. Why would you want to turn iMessage off though. SMS is old technology and doesn‘t even consistently support group messaging.
No one mentioned that fact about SMS to me. You're saying iMessage uses wi-fi and SMS goes over a cellular network? Does that mean if iMessage isn't available, a text would go out through SMS? This stuff still confuses me. Thanks.
SMS will work over a cellular connection or through a WiFi connection if WiFi calling is enabled and being used. iMessage needs a data connection and will go out either via WiFi or cellular data connection.

When it comes to group messaging that is outside of iMessage, that actually uses MMS messaging (which is basically like SMS messaging but for multimedia basically as well as group messaging support).

If a data connection isn't available and iMessage fails then depending on your Messages settings on your device an iMessage can fall back to going out as an SMS message.
 
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