Two things need to change and this would be a hit:
1/ Find My support or similar (for parents who would give this to kids)
2/ WhatsApp?????? That is the ultimate social network so it should definitely not be there by default.
What is the deal with WhatsApp? My family roped me into using it, "because it's better than text messages", we've been using it regularly for over a year, and it's... literally the same thing? I don't get it.
1. If you're not based in a country where SMS was included free, it was/is advantageous to use something delivered over the Internet, rather than carrier.
2. It allowed for sharing multimedia better.
3. It closed the divide between Android and iOS, giving a singular experience across the two systems.
4. Prior to RCS, it allowed for typing notifications, high resolution media, read receipts, etc whereas SMS did not offer these options.
5. There really isn't any additional benefit for most of these now; but, folks are already ingrained into the ecosystem.
This phone not having RCS is not great. In the US it's the closest thing to a real messaging app that you can just use with random people without pre-arranging to install Signal or something.
Right, but if absolutely everybody you know is on WhatsApp and have no desire to move to Signal or Telegram, chances are you're going to end up using WhatsApp regardless of your feelings toward Meta.
Decent support for groups. If you're in a country where WhatsApp is common, like the UK, odds are you'll end up in a dozen WhatsApp groups. Especially if you have kids. Groups for every birthday, playdate, year group in school...
And the result is just penetration, so if you're somewhere it's widespread, odds are it's going to be the preference of a lot of people.
For me, SMS is for spammy notifications. WhatsApp is where all the messages from real people I have the phone number of comes. I never get real people SMS'ing me.