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?
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’m from the US and people are using SMS less and less I feel like (though again, I’m biased because Android). Even most of my networking for work is done on Instagram, which to me is incredibly bizarre.
Canada too, but at least we don’t rely on whatsapp/meta
I think it’s mostly an US thing. The rest of the world has moved away from SMS.
Wait, this is over SMS!?!? How quaint! I haven’t seen anybody use an SMS for anything outside of spam in years!
Apart from SMS Auth and occasionally a “NEW FIRE BUD 10/10 stardawg smoke ring me” messages, apart from those SMS is dead…
You’re right on the money with this comment, what a strange country they have over there…
no one in the UK sends SMS messages
I do, I use stuff like WhatsApp and Discord too mainly of course, but an SMS is fast and reliable, as opposed to the others that require a decent data signal on both the sender and receiver (which is often lacking on my network unfortunately).
Plus, I can schedule SMS messages for a particular time so as to not wake the recipient up if I want to send them a message in the middle of the night, very handy!
Plus, I can theme my SMS app however I want, changing colours, fonts, etc, to be exactly what I like, as well as picking out an SMS app that has the features I’m looking for in the first place (I recommend Chomp). I find applications like WhatsApp to be extremely limited in this regard. Not a deal breaker, but I do love customisability and choice.
I certainly don’t use SMS anywhere near as much as Discord, but it’s wonderful to have it, and I use it regularly :-D
P.S I’ve wanted to use Signal for years but nobody I meet uses it :-( Such a shame, it seems neat!
P.P.S Telegram looks neat too, unfortunately again the adoption with people I know is strangely just 100% furries and nobody else, so I stick to the client that everybody uses rather than having a bunch of them installed (Discord & occasionally WhatsApp).
Fair enough! Maybe it depends on where you live, too. My parents live in rural Cornwall so if I send an SMS they might not get it for a few days (no signal where they live) but their WiFi is good so they’ll definitely get a WhatsApp (or other) message.
How old are you? When I studied in Scotland 2016-2020, the preferred messaging app was messenger (i.e. facebook), and I’m curious whether that has changed in the last 3 years or whether it’s a different demographic.
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.
I’m over 30 (in the US) and have an iPhone, but before I got my current job I was almost never reachable by phone, either out of service range or phone was dead, so I give out my google number so that messages and calls go to my email and get forwarded to my phone. So I make green bubbles from my iPhone.
When people see me pull out my phone for the first time they get SO MAD. “WHY ARE YOUR BUBBLES GREEN?! YOU HAVE AN iPHONE!!” I don’t understand. I know I could reverse things so that my cell number forwards to my google number instead of the other way around, but it’s just not something I’ve ever gotten around to. Why you so mad bruh?
And developing countries are dominated by Chinese Android OEMs, with Samsung unable to beat them on the mid-range segment.
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.
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.
Best answer
It really is. If someone is willing to be weird about your phone choice, I question the other stuff they might be weird about. Major red flag.
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…
in the US, for some bizarre reason
Is it really that bizarre to use the default messaging app that uses the most widespread protocol(s)?
Yes? SMS is ancient, limited, and Apple’s added proprietary layer on top of it isn’t interoperable so “most widespread protocol” doesn’t even make sense.
There’s a reason Asia, Europe and South America aren’t using SMS in 2023.
And you know, it’s a smartphone, installing apps is kinda the whole point.
Right, the rest of the world uses…. other proprietary messaging apps that have no interoperability between them. You can’t talk from signal to WhatsApp, or WhatsApp to telegram, or telegram to signal. You all need to be using the same messaging app.
The reason why the rest of the world never really got on with SMS in general is because most providers elsewhere in the world still charge for SMS messages while they’ve been free in the US for over a decade. When you have to pay for texts, you tend to look for an alternative real quick.
I think you are misunderstanding what the average person does with their phone. The vast majority of people have phones and the vast majority of them are not tech literate enough to go into the app store looking for how to message people. They just use defaults.
Yes they are, they are… Everyone in Europe. I don’t know a single person, including those in their 70s and 80s, without WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger.
Yes, because that’s socially forced on us. I don’t want to have multiple different messaging apps (2 of which from the same fucking megacorp) to have to navigate around.
Person A like to message via app A, but person B likes to message via app B, and person C messages via both app A and B so it’s impossible to keep a fucking unbroken line of conversation going etc etc.
Not to mention that means that I HAVE to have these apps on my phone as a result. No matter how strict you set up your privacy controls to restrict their access, there’s inevitably shit that they still scrape from you, even stuff you’ve specifically rejected access to.
And then on top of all that, you’re giving them all of your conversaions with people. They may tell you it’s all encrypted and all that shit, but I don’t entirely believe it.
It drives me up the wall. Let me have one messaging app. Let it be the default app on the phone.
Well… If the entire world except one region manages to install a third party messaging app, I’d say I’m not misunderstanding anything and the average person is more than capable of doing so. WhatsApp is installed in over 92% of Brazilian smartphones - this includes grandmas, tech illiterate people, and all other examples you couldn think of.
Apple didn’t add anything on top of SMS. iMessage users data and has all the ‘cool’ features. If it cant reach someone via iMessage it falls back to plain old SMS.
Yes. It falls back to the protocol that doesn’t have any of the last 20 years worth of added features. How amazing.
I think it is, especially when the default doesn’t communicate well with a different ecosystem (Android vs iOS). So installing a app that gives you more features than plain text and works with all relevant mobile os worlds absolutely makes sense.
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 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.
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.
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
It’s bewildering to me how this continues to be an issue only in the US, the rest of the world figured out this problem around 2010, and I’m not kidding. It’s like you guys are still arguing about Beta vs VHS in 2023
It’s so exclusive to the US that I didn’t even understand what OP was saying before reading the comment section for clues.
Blue bubbles, green bubbles? Wtf is that and how is it related to Android/iOS.
For reference, I live in South East Asia and use Android, but I have never heard my friends using iOS complain about some kinda bubble colour.
I live in the US and I had no idea what the OP was talking about. I am in the same boat as you with the blue vs green bubbles thing (but now I know thanks to the comments) and am also an android user. I was today years old when I found out I apparently send green bubbles to iPhones.
Why are you guys texting? Don’t you have WhatsApp or Telegram?
I haven’t sent an SMS since 2012. What is going on in the US?
Well, there are many who use whatsapp here. But it’s definitely not universal.
Don’t you guys get like an incredible amount of spam via SMS? It became kinda like email but worse.
I can’t block the short numbers companies use to send SMS because they are usually using a third party SMS service. So, different companies can send messages that arrive with the same number. If I block an SMS ad, I might be also blocking an important SMS alert from my bank warning some security issue.
really spam texts i don’t remember getting many of those. i do get auto text for things like deliveries and check deposits but not spam
It’s also somewhat a thing in Canada but we’re just US-Lite
I like android better because it has way less limitations than apple. It also seems more flexible as far as apps and customization is concerned.
I like Android because I get more of a choice in phones than just the two or three on offer by Apple. I usually go with Samsung but I’ve had Motorola and LG before… just depends who’s got the best device in my price range.
Curious, what do you do on an Android phone that can’t be done on an iPhone?
Are you 14? In that case maybe.
In my experience a lot of people act 14 all the way past their teens.
I’m an Android user and I have no idea what any of this means.
It’s normal to not know this since almost no one outside of the US uses phone messages instead of Whatsapp or telegram
When on Apple and texting another apple user the text bubbles are one color. When texting any other brand it shows up another color. So iPhone users can act like dicks because they are the in crowd when messaging eachother.
So iPhone users can act like dicks because they are the in crowd when messaging each other.
They can interact with their messages in more ways than others. Direct message reactions (like, heart) and they can see the dot-dot-dot when another iPhoner was typing. I actually had a girl give me a hard time over this because she was iPhone and I’m android.
