I asked if people chose iPhone for the blue bubbles elsewhere a couple days ago, and while there was some good discourse on that post, the blue bubbles definitely also came up as a reason.
In my experience, when people find out my texts are green, they oftentimes would rather switch to a different platform altogether like Instagram or just not text at all.
Is this actually a deal-breaker in friendships out there?
If they don’t want to text you because you don’t have an iPhone they’re not friends you want to have.
Yes, but it’s a feature, not a bug.
It’s a super low investment and quick way to identify people you should avoid.
I think this must be a cultural thing because no one in the UK sends SMS messages. Everyone just uses WhatsApp or signal or telegram. I’m android and have literally never had anyone mention the colour of my bubble. I didn’t know this was a thing!
I don’t understand the apple cult. I’ve tried their phones. I prefer Android phones.
I have heard of some people who think non apple users are subpar, but those are the ones you want to avoid.
If you live anywhere outside of the US, the question is irrelevant, because everyone uses whatsapp etc.
Within the US, if you are over the age of 30, it probably doesn’t matter.
if you are under the age of 30 AND in the US, I mean, if someone does judge you for it, you at least have a great way to filter shitty people out of your life lol.
If you think you’re better than me because you have an iPhone and I run an Android, I don’t want to talk to you anyway.
People are so fucking petty and elitist over the dumbest fucking things.
In some social circles, yes. Teenagers tend to cling into anything that could potentially be interpreted as a social status symbol or group identity - in the US, for some bizarre reason, people still use the default messaging app and SMS so iMessage and it’s “green vs blue bubble” design immediately fills this space. This can also show up in very shallow dating scenes, like someone using Tinder and just looking for a random hook up with a nice dinner beforehand - they could see the iPhone as a sign of wealth and available money to spend.
But for most adults, living normal lives… I don’t think so. At least, never have been an issue with any of my friends, family members, academic peers, coworkers…
If your “friends” make so much fuss over text bubbles, probably the best course of action is to find better friends.
This.
Doubly so when the whole reason is Apple intentionally creating a degraded experience for everyone who’s not paying them.
not to mention installing any chat app or using existing Instagram chat only take you less than a minutes to do
You can have a preference, even a strong one. You can also discuss it with people. But shutting people out because of their phone? That’s a major personality red flag anyway.
Let me guess, you are from the United States? Every time I heard about this is only from the US, never see anyone outside giving a single fuck about that.
Also, do you really wanna be friend with someone that choose friendship by the phone their friend uses? WtfIts only a dealbreaker if you are dealing with someone who is exceedingly vapid and worthless as a human being, and you should be grateful for it, because it lets you know real quick not to waste another ounce of effort on their dumb asses.
People that buy Apple are some of the most superficial beings on this planet.
Who gives a fuck about text bubbles?
Find friends that aren’t so shallow.
I don’t think it’s literally about the color. It’s that SMS has no features. I don’t like talking to people over SMS either. I like modern chat platforms, like Signal and Telegram, that support reactions, high-quality media, receipts, encryption, etc.
Android is switching over to RCS where available, as long as you use the Google Messages app. The default app on a lot of phones don’t support it, but all major carriers in the US do support it. RCS is far superior to MMS or SMS. RCS also supports reactions, receipts, etc, though I’m unsure about whether or not it supports high quality media, but I do know that I’ve had no issues getting good pictures texted to me from other Android users who have RCS. If apple would follow suit, this would be a non issue, but Apple refuses to play ball, so they can use it as a marketing tactic. I’d bet that if they opened up iMessage to Android, there would be a whole lot of people adopting it, just so we’re all on the same page, but yet again, Apple refuses to play nice. This entire thing is Apple’s fault for wanting to keep iPhone users in a walled garden.
I wouldn’t say Android is switching, I’d say Google is switching. There’s no support in Android itself. Third-party SMS apps cannot hook into RCS. There’s limited carrier support. Google is running the RCS relay, and it’s only at the app level, not the OS level. This might seem like an academic distinction to some people, but certainly not to the billion or so users in China, anyone who likes third-party apps, or anyone who prefers deGoogled Android OSes.
Most carriers still don’t support RCS themselves, Apple would need to build their own relay like Google did.
RCS itself is not necessarily E2E encrypted, though Google has hacked that on top if you use their app. This is not an improvement over other closed systems like iMessage. It’s just another closed system.
And because it’s Google, the left hand has no idea what the right hand is doing. Doesn’t work on Google Fi or Google Voice, last I checked.
You couldn’t pay me to adopt another Google messaging platform after they’ve jerked me around endlessly with g-chat/Hangouts/Duo/Voice. I’ll use RCS when it’s truly open and standard. As long as Google is the gatekeeper, I’m out.
The whole system is a mess, largely thanks to Google’s mismanagement.
RCS is also a walled garden. Embrace a messenger app that everyone could use today like Signal or Whatsapp
I just know that those 12 people who down voted this are also some of those superficial beings. Like really? Grow up, the products you use shouldn’t have any effect on your ability to be friends with someone. I find it extremely hard to believe that their are full grown adult human beings that believe this is.
You make the choices you make, that includes the people you interact with.
I prefer not to interact with paper thin personalities that buy Apple products.
Are you 14? In that case maybe.
This is so American…
“Let me send an SMS, while I ride my horse to go to my bank and do other things that people used to do in 1870.”
“Oh, their SMS color is different! I dislike people with a different color than me.”
I dislike people with a different color than me.
Well…Americans are sometimes really superficial, unknowingly or taught since child. You can see something very similar in HK. The City is known for people being really superficial due to culture and the economic pressure on them. Marrying or dating purely rich money and status is pretty main stream
It’s more, “oh, that video clip looks like shit, and every time anyone on this chat likes something, everyone gets spammed a repetitive long-form explanation, and we can’t add Jimmy to the chat because it’s SMS now and AT&T limits it to 10 people, and …”
In the bad old days, SMS was incredibly limited. Apple came out with iMessage, which was both a full IP messaging client with rich features, but seamlessly fell back to SMS, and that was amazing, because a lot of the people you wanted to talk to only had SMS. Google briefly had a similar thing, but whoever ran that product lost the weekly pistols at dawn match that Google uses to set corporate strategy, and hangouts lost SMS integration, which meant you needed two message apps — one for IP messages that was good and a separate one for SMS that sucked. And they were completely separate — no shared threads or history or anything. And then hangouts was killed anyway to make room for chat, or meet, or duo, or allo, or jello, or J-Lo, or Oreos, or who the fuck knows anymore-oh. And so for several years, if you wanted the only thing anyone in the US ever wanted from a messaging app, you had to get an iPhone, because Google kept killing their apps every year like, “hey guys, our new app still can’t talk to your mom, but we integrated the “hot dog or not” feature from Silicon Valley into it, and isn’t that amazing?”
Now, it doesn’t matter, because no one is limited to SMS anymore. Everyone could be on whatever IP platform. But Google still picked a fucking standard built by the phone company with crappy baggage attached like requiring a phone number to use it, and anyway, they’re so late that everyone already picked iMessage. Even if RCS was as good, no one wants to change a bunch of stuff to be no better than when they started, and RCS also still isn’t as good.
I was about to say. Over here 90% of text communications are over WhatsApp. That’s a huge problem for a variety of reasons, but everyone is green bubble.
It’s weird to say but I’d much rather us keep doing this stupid SMS thing before jumping into bed with anything Meta.
Now matrix or signal or something? Sign me up.
Same, I don’t think I ever sent an SMS since I got a smartphone. I also agree that relying on WhatsApp for communication isn’t the best, which is why I’m trying to gradually push myself out of there to move towards a more privacy focused messaging apps, knowing full well that I may be cutting off myself from a lot of people.
In the US SMS is still the standard, it’s infuriating. Phones are starting to switch to RCS. I’ve tried a bunch of times to convert my core group of friends to Signal and it’s like talking to a brick wall.
Does your friend group have no group chat? SMS does not have a group chat feature I think, right?
Usually group chats and media sharing are the features that bring people over to messengers.
Sms group chats just sends an mms.
I mean considering that iPhones have ~50% market share in the US. You can just as much say iMessage is the standard.
Factor in the other messenger services and SMS is probably a pretty small slice of the current text messaging landscape
Green is what means it’s an SMS. Whereas blue is the much more modern iMessage platform.
That’s the point, SMS sucks
I love the blue bubble thing being a … thing.
It makes identifying people who are a waste of time really easy. Making a big deal out of the colour of a text message bubble? Smell ya later loser, you ain’t worth investing any time in.
Move on lads. If someone’s shallow enough to care about the brand of phone you use they can go sniff farts for all I care. I ain’t following them in their campaign to give the worlds richest company more money. It reminds me of that fundraiser to make one of those reality TV dickheads a billionaire by donating them cash. Like how does transferring some of your small amount of wealth to their giant pool of wealth somehow boost your own… anything?? Probably the second stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.
