Q: Why don’t some Android customers get my iPhone textual content messages?

A: Textual content messaging was as soon as thought of an anti-social communication methodology by those that grew up having telephone conversations as their default.

Quick ahead to 2023 and everybody realizes how environment friendly and helpful textual content messaging has grow to be and, in lots of circumstances, making a telephone name as an alternative of texting is now thought of a nuisance.

The unique methodology of texting, generally known as SMS (Quick Message Service) began to interchange pagers within the ’90s and grew in recognition from there.

SMS had many limitations, beginning with the must be linked to a mobile community to work. It additionally supplied no encryption, so your messages had been despatched in plain textual content.

As the expansion of smartphone images exploded, methods to ship photos by way of a messaging app began to emerge akin to MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) and Apple’s iMessage, which launched in 2011.

iMessage allowed iPhone customers to ship and obtain photos and video to one another over mobile or Wi-Fi connections with encryption, an enormous enchancment over SMS and MMS on the time.

Apple has at all times constructed partitions across the iPhone in an effort to persuade Android customers to modify, so whilst new trade requirements developed, the iPhone messaging remained in its “walled backyard.”

To today, iMessage is the default for iPhone customers, which might trigger an inoperability challenge when speaking with non-iPhone customers, particularly in group messages. The first challenge is when it sends one thing to an Android consumer, it kicks down into SMS or MMS, that are each archaic.

Relying upon the setting in your iPhone, messages that you simply ship to Android telephones might by no means make it out.

Conversely, iPhone customers who’re despatched a video from an Android machine normally get a really low-resolution model of the video as a result of the gadgets don’t use the identical messaging protocols.

It’s straightforward to imagine that Android gadgets are inferior as a result of they’ll’t ship video by way of textual content to iPhones, however that’s not the case and it’s about to alter.

Apple will lastly relent

After over a decade of resistance, Apple has lastly introduced that it’s going to be part of the RCS (Wealthy Communication Companies) customary supported by the remainder of the trade someday in 2024.

iMessage will proceed to be the first messaging platform, it’s going to merely swap to the RCS customary when sending and receiving from non-iPhone gadgets.

This will likely be an enormous win for each Android and iPhone customers who ship a lot of photos and movies to quite a lot of family and friends.

Within the meantime

Whereas the world waits for this blissful occasion to happen, there are a few workarounds you need to use.

Step one is to verify your iPhone has MMS Messaging turned on by going to Settings > Messages. Keep in mind, to ship MMS or SMS messages, you should be linked to a mobile community or have Wi-Fi calling turned on.

Many of the world has adopted WhatsApp as a substitute, which eliminates the compatibility points imposed by the present scenario.

You too can use Fb Messenger, Snapchat or Sign till Apple lastly activates the RCS swap.

Ken Colburn is founder and CEO of Knowledge Medical doctors Laptop Companies. Ask any tech query on Fb or X.