[azinman2]

Sorry, but group chat over SMS is crap. Lots of Android phones as well don’t operate group SMS well, you get reduced resolution in photos and videos, can’t like/heart messages in the same way, no typing indicators, etc etc. Losing iMessage features sucks when you’re otherwise used to it.

[RickS]

> reduced resolution in photos and videos

This and group names are the absolute killers.

It's tough. My understanding is that SMS is at fault under the surface, requiring that images and videos be compressed to fit a size limit (right?).

My preferred solution would be mandated adversarial interoperability.

Absent that, I wish android could bundle images into a dead simple hosting site that send me a link to all the images, at max resolution, displayed with zero chrome whatsoever, in a browser window. Then I can download them like normal assets (with my press-and-hold browser utils. no third party UI).

Receiving photos packaged in a google library, for example, is a nightmare.

[jdofaz]

SMS doesn't support pictures at all. MMS is layered on top, where a hidden sms is received telling the phone to fetch the media via http. That is why you can receive text messages without data, but not pictures.

I don't know the details of the MMS spec, but I know the mms picture quality improved when I switched carriers several years ago.

[nerdjon]

> Absent that, I wish android could bundle images into a dead simple hosting site that send me a link to all the images, at max resolution, displayed with zero chrome whatsoever, in a browser window. Then I can download them like normal assets (with my press-and-hold browser utils. no third party UI).

I would not be particularly happy to find out that someone I was messaging on an Android phone could easily just send up any images I send them to a public site.

(Already not happy with Google having data about me that I do not consent to thanks to people with Android phones)

[RickS]

>I would not be particularly happy to find out that someone I was messaging on an Android phone could easily just send up any images I send them to a public site.

There may have been a misunderstanding here.

I was referring to an android phone sending me (on iPhone) hosted images as a fallback rather then sending them via MMS (lossy) or google photos (bloated).

[Wowfunhappy]

It's not really public if it's an "unlisted" url with a sufficiently long/random URL. You could also have them expire after some reasonable amount of time.

As far as Google having data... I'm not clear how what OP proposed would give them any more data than they currently have.

[NobodyNada]

MMS is also extremely unreliable compared to iMessage (as I mentioned in another comment thread). Messages are often delayed by upwards of 15 minutes, and I can't send or receive at all if I'm somewhere with less-than-perfect cell coverage (including my home and work). Additionally, some cellular plans can't receive MMS at all, and I've seen some Android phones unable to receive messages sent to a group larger than 8 or 10 participants.

[asclepi]

That's subjective, but your observations are valid in many scenarios.

The point I want to make is that Messages is not preventing them from including Android users because they don't have an iPhone, which is a general misunderstanding that I often observe when talking with Android users who use Whatsapp or similar and is also recurring here. If the Android user gets locked out, it's because a human decided to, not because Messages refused to include that user based on ecosystem lock-in (unlike Whatsapp).

However, like Twitter OP, I can testify that teens attach a lot more weight to the blue/green than they should. But then again, it's everywhere in popular culture. Try finding a recent hit movie/TV series or music video, produced in the US, that shows green bubbles (or Android for that matter, even though it has a higher market share).

[Terretta]

> teens attach a lot more weight to the blue/green than they should

Have you looked at parental controls for carriers? Chats with green messages are in the log, chats with blue messages are not.

Depending how much they like their parents reading their messages, maybe teens aren’t attaching enough weight.

[saagarjha]

Parental controls: teaching teenagers all over the country the value of end-to-end encryption.

[mr_toad]

> Try finding a recent hit movie/TV series or music video, produced in the US, that shows green bubbles

I imagine they get paid for using blue bubbles, just like other product placements.

[NullPrefix]

>no typing indicators

That is a feature. Also no "seen" privacy violators.

[RickS]

Agreed on the "typing" thing being somewhat invasive. I'm not sure that can be turned off...

In iMessage, the "seen" notis (read receipts) are set on the reader side. They're totally customizable and can be globally disabled.

I have them on personally, because I find that it encourages good reply etiquette on my part, but they're easy to turn off in a granular way. chat-by-chat, whenever you want.

I'm not sure how this works for IG, others. I believe in whatsapp you can turn them off at the expense of losing that info for everyone else, but I'm not 100% on that.

The feature is extraordinarily useful in group chats. If you're trying to change venues while coordinating a group activity with people that haven't arrived, you get a realtime picture of who has up-to-date information and who doesn't. Makes a big difference.

[NobodyNada]

Read receipts are disabled by default IIRC. In the rare cases where I'm drafting a message long enough to worry about the typing indicator, it's usually easier anyway to compose it in a text editor/notes app and copy/paste when I'm ready to send.

[tyree731]

IMHO the bigger problem with group chat over SMS is that some networks (looking at you AT&T) limit the number of participants in a group SMS chat to ten. If you try to send a message to more than ten people it sends it ten of them, silently ignoring the rest, leading to weird fractured SMS group chats.

[thakoppno]

you are right about the limit of ten. but it may be part of the sms specification itself. at least that’s what i remember from looking it up a couple years ago.

[rasz]

Nothing stops the phone from sending multiple sms, its the implementations fault

[asdff]

But so what? It still works if a bit worse. The same can't be said for any other group messaging app. If you truly need this tool for the job, buy an ipod touch for $100.