I’m not sure about that last part. A bunch of us have said we can have group chats just fine with people using Android.
Others, who seem to be outside the U.S., don’t seem to be able to. I’m still not completely clear on whether that’s because they don’t have the “Group Messaging” option even after turning on the “MMS Messaging” option in Settings>Messages as a result of location, carrier or some other factor.
In my experience this is not the main problem (at least here in Italy).
Even if I could group message via iMessage with non iPhone users, they would not do it, since sms are a paid option for most of the contracts here.
I pay less than 10 € / month for unlimited voice traffic, 100 gb of data traffic and 100 free sms. when the 100 sms are over, every single message is 0.10 € or something like that. If I have to chat with someone not on iPhone sms it’s not viable, and so it is for an android user.
So you have to use a messaging app: whatsapp if by far the most common one (it started before the FB acquisition), and not so many people is willing to move away from that (even if they tried telegram or signal after the “consent-gate” @illustrata was talking about).
I see. That makes sense. Thanks!
Seems to be carrier dependent. I don’t have these settings (Optus in Australia) regardless of whether MMS is activated or not.
When you turn on the group messaging on SMS, does that apply to everyone on the chat or just you? Just wondering if the Android people still get an individual text rather than the conversation chain you’d get on WhatsApp or other providers.
I think it depends on their settings. One of the Android people I used to text with in groups would get individual messages. They switched to an iPhone after a while (only partly for this reason).
The US didn’t charge for SMS (came with the phone plan) unlike most of the rest of the world. People didn’t look for an alternative and the iMessage wedged itself into that space and has dominated since. It’s quite interesting to watch although I notice more and more people in the US have Whatsapp (even if some don’t use it).
I’m also seeing more people migrate onto Telegram.
FWIW I think Telegram is a much better designed app than Whatsapp. I’ve taken advantage of having the two by putting all my personal conversations on Whatsapp and all my work conversations on Telegram. That why I can focus more easily.
The US did charge for SMS until the mid-00s at least. You could get plans with unlimited SMS as well, but getting charged 10-25 cents per message was common.
Heck, until a few months ago my son was on a Ting plan which charged for SMS in “buckets” - $X/month for Y messages, $2X/month for 5Y messages, etc.
Well in that case not in the smartphone era? That said, I think unlimited SMS was a much more common perk in the US than in other places. (purely anecdotal)