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What is iMessage?

B

budmonster

macrumors regular
Original poster
Sep 20, 2013
229
1
Pittsburgh, PA
I just got my iPhone, new Apple user so be gentle. My wife and I both purchased iPhones the other day, 5s and 5c. We have been dealing with texting issues. For an example, sometimes I'll send her texts from home while she is at work. She wont get them until she walks through the door at home? She never got any of them at work. Other times If I'm on WiFi I won't receive hers until I turn it off or vice versa. It's driving me nuts. She told me that she receives other peoples texts while at work with no issues.

These phone are brand new from Best Buy. I'm on Verizon. I had a dispute with them, they took away my unlimited data but I just got it back today. I don't if that might have something to do or what but I need to get this resolved. Also, when I was at Best Buy they never took the iPhones out of the box to activate them. Did they miss a step at all? Maybe a SIM card issue?
 
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I hear sometimes iMessage (through WIFI) doesn't get through immediately. Try turning that off temporarily and only use cellular text to see if that's the prob.
 
Mrbobb said:
I hear sometimes iMessage (through WIFI) doesn't get through immediately. Try turning that off temporarily and only use cellular text to see if that's the prob.
Click to expand...

Oh, so once I turn on WiFi, iMessage turns on? I don't even know what iMessage is? I constantly have WiFi on at the house. If I can't send texts while WiFi is on well that that sucks, lol.
 
U know ur on iMessage when the conversation bubbles are in Blue. Cellular messages are in Green.
 
Why is iMessage causing texts not to be delivered to other iOS devices. How do I send regular texts to everyone no matter the device?

I also did a test. I turned iMessage and wifi off on my iPhone and sent my wife a text. She got it but when she replied my iPhone didn't get her response but my iPad did? My iPad has iMessage on and it only wifi. I think she still has iMessage on but no wifi. If she has iMessage on do I have to have it turned on too? And I thought you had to have wifi on for it to work?

This is driving me nuts. I'm so confused.
 
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budmonster said:
I did, I don't understand how I'm able to send iMessages when wifi is off? Also, it doesn't explain why some messages go through right away, why some go through an hour later and why some never send.
Click to expand...

iMessages go through either wifi or cellular data. just sounds like you guys didn't set it up properly.
 
If you don't care about iMessage you can shut it off permanently.

Settings > Messages> Toggle iMessage OFF

This will force all messages to be sent as regular text messages. Make sure you have unlimited texting or a texting plan with enough texts though.
 
Make sure you have "Send as SMS" checked off in the messages settings. That way when you don't have a data connection the iMessage will change to a regular text message.

Since you're on Verizon and lose data connectivity whenever you are on a phone call, what's probably happening is that your wife's phone is sending you an iMessage but it won't come through until you hang up the phone or connect to Wifi. One way to help with this is have her take a look at the message when it sends. If it still doesn't show "delivered" after about 15 seconds, she can just tap the message and select to "send as text message" and it will go through even without data.
 
budmonster said:
I did, I don't understand how I'm able to send iMessages when wifi is off? Also, it doesn't explain why some messages go through right away, why some go through an hour later and why some never send.
Click to expand...

Your iphone has cellular data, so imessages will go thru that.

The reason imessages won't send right away is if the receiving device has its data turned off. Which means your wife's iPhone is somewhere with no reception either 3G/LTE or Wifi.

If you don't care for imessages then just go to settings -> messages -> and turn off imessage. All your texts will be sent thru SMS, which should be free on basically every cell plan in america.

The only advantage of iMessage is you can text non phones or international friends for free. Its basically free text using data.

When an iPhone is activated, its phone number is logged on the apple servers, so apple knows you are texting another iPhone, it will revert to iMessage. But even if the iMessage fails, it should give you an option to send via text message instead.
 
budmonster said:
I just got my iPhone, new Apple user so be gentle. My wife and I both purchased iPhones the other day, 5s and 5c. We have been dealing with texting issues. For an example, sometimes I'll send her texts from home while she is at work. She wont get them until she walks through the door at home? She never got any of them at work. Other times If I'm on WiFi I won't receive hers until I turn it off or vice versa. It's driving me nuts. She told me that she receives other peoples texts while at work with no issues.

These phone are brand new from Best Buy. I'm on Verizon. I had a dispute with them, they took away my unlimited data but I just got it back today. I don't if that might have something to do or what but I need to get this resolved. Also, when I was at Best Buy they never took the iPhones out of the box to activate them. Did they miss a step at all? Maybe a SIM card issue?
Click to expand...

iOS 7 User Guide manual below. Click on Messages for further on your question. Read the rest for your phone..

http://help.apple.com/iphone/7/
 
budmonster said:
I did, I don't understand how I'm able to send iMessages when wifi is off? Also, it doesn't explain why some messages go through right away, why some go through an hour later and why some never send.
Click to expand...

Well iOS basically has some crazy system in place where it can tell if the receiving party is also on an iPhone whether you're doing it on WiFi or not. I haven't the foggiest HOW, but iMessage is basically "iOS-based messaging" and if you think of it like that it makes more sense.

There's a bit of a blip in how it works over WiFi sometimes though, so that can cause delays.
 
Wifi or cellular data us irrelevant for iMessage, just needs data. Make sure do not disturb is off.

iPad receives iMessage due to registered email in contacts.

Delayed delivery is indicative of no data to phone. Do you have cellular data turned on when on the road? Do you have lte enabled?
 
When ios 7 rolled out, it secretly toggled OFF send as sms, (creating major caos).

That's right, so if your friends iphone has imessage turned off, you wont get through.
Now your android friends can't be reached either, cause sms used to always be ON, but now it's toggled OFF, (android folks don't have imessage).

I have had all kinds of problems messaging my friends after ios 7 secretly turned off everyone's sms.

Personally, 99.9 % of us have unlimited text, so there is no reason to let apple capture and store all your personal messages on their servers.

I had to send out a mass tx message to all 687 of my contacts, Settings/messages/ toggle sms back ON,
(all my messaging problems instantly vanished).
 
Sceptre said:
When ios 7 rolled out, it secretly toggled OFF send as sms, (creating major caos).

That's right, so if your friends iphone has imessage turned off, you wont get through.
Now your android friends can't be reached either, cause sms used to always be ON, but now it's toggled OFF, (android folks don't have imessage).

I have had all kinds of problems messaging my friends after ios 7 secretly turned off everyone's sms.

Personally, 99.9 % of us have unlimited text, so there is no reason to let apple capture and store all your personal messages on their servers.

I had to send out a mass tx message to all 687 of my contacts, Settings/messages/ toggle sms back ON,
(all my messaging problems instantly vanished).
Click to expand...
It would only try to send an iMessage to contact that support it. For those with Android phones it would know they don't support iMessage and send as an SMS (the whole option to send as SMS only relates to whether or not send mesage as an SMS if it failed as an iMessage first).
 
imessage is an application developed by apple for iOS and OS X Mountain Lion. It is an instant messenger service.
 
C DM said:
It would only try to send an iMessage to contact that support it. For those with Android phones it would know they don't support iMessage and send as an SMS (the whole option to send as SMS only relates to whether or not send mesage as an SMS if it failed as an iMessage first).
Click to expand...


But as an iphone owner, I hate imessage, don't what all my messages stored on apple's servers, and have ALWAYS had it turned off.

The problem is NOT with android owners, it's all my friends with iphones who updated to ios7 and now their messages don't go thru to me, because their sms has been toggled off with the update, (without their knowledge). They of course have only imessage enabled after the update, so they read my message, then their reply to me fails, (cause their sms has been toggled off). They call me and I tell them, settings/messages/toggle sms ON, and all is well.
Understand what's going on here now?
 
Sceptre said:
But as an iphone owner, I hate imessage, don't what all my messages stored on apple's servers, and have ALWAYS had it turned off.

The problem is NOT with android owners, it's all my friends with iphones who updated to ios7 and now their messages don't go thru to me, because their sms has been toggled off with the update, (without their knowledge). They of course have only imessage enabled after the update, so they read my message, then their reply to me fails, (cause their sms has been toggled off). They call me and I tell them, settings/messages/toggle sms ON, and all is well.
Understand what's going on here now?
Click to expand...
With all that information, yes, it seems like the issue is with Apple thinking that you are still using iMessage when you are not. What somehow needs to happen is for Apple to know that you aren't using iMessage so that whoever sends you a message would automatically send it as SMS as Apple would know you aren't using iMessage.

As for the whole thing about Apple storing your messages and whatnot, aside from the fact that they are supposed to be encoded anyway, when you are using SMS the carrier stores your messages (and not even in an encoded way), so in a sense they aren't any more secure, and perhaps even less so.
 
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