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Apple adopts RCS into iMessage

On2wheels

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Been using an iphone 15 pro that was gifted to me, still have a Pixel around for emergencies. I finally took the plunge into iOS 18 and went straight to 18.1 tonight. Can't believe how petty Apple was about their messaging update. In the screenshot above notice how scheduled sending is in a message with blue bubbles? Yes that's correct, it only works to other iphone users.

RCS connected right up and worked no problem to my Android friends, but the fact they limit scheduled send to other iphones is straight up schoolyard pettiness.
The list of things pushing me back to Android just got a little longer.
 

clshades

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Big White Ski Resort
That is good to have it supported across the OSes, but I've had frustrations with RCS on Android messaging and shut it off. Example:

- Arrive at school to pick up daughter.
- Sent RCS text to tell her I'm there. No issue for me, I guess, because I have data.
- She has no data away from WiFi, and she's not on WiFi at school, so the message isn't delivered to her.
- After an extended non-response I look at the little icons below the message, and realize it was never delivered.
- I have to click it again and tell it to send as SMS. She gets the message.

After several times of that annoyance, I said get me clear of that!! Can't risk messages not getting through. Also hard to teach a 13 year old to consistently check the tiny indicator icons to see that her message was sent, and click and switch to SMS if it wasn't. Definitely NOT what you want in an emergency when your kid is trying to message you.

Turned it off on both our Android phones.
This
 

lowfat

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Grande Prairie, AB
That is good to have it supported across the OSes, but I've had frustrations with RCS on Android messaging and shut it off. Example:

- Arrive at school to pick up daughter.
- Sent RCS text to tell her I'm there. No issue for me, I guess, because I have data.
- She has no data away from WiFi, and she's not on WiFi at school, so the message isn't delivered to her.
- After an extended non-response I look at the little icons below the message, and realize it was never delivered.
- I have to click it again and tell it to send as SMS. She gets the message.

After several times of that annoyance, I said get me clear of that!! Can't risk messages not getting through. Also hard to teach a 13 year old to consistently check the tiny indicator icons to see that her message was sent, and click and switch to SMS if it wasn't. Definitely NOT what you want in an emergency when your kid is trying to message you.

Turned it off on both our Android phones.
IMessage is the same tho. My parents don't have data on their phones. My sisters aren't able to text them whenever they aren't home as iMessage never reverts to sms.
 

Lysrin

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IMessage is the same tho. My parents don't have data on their phones. My sisters aren't able to text them whenever they aren't home as iMessage never reverts to sms.
Having now moved to iPhone as a family, I would say you are right, but it is easier to see that an iMessage has been "Delivered" or not. It isn't analyzing tiny icons. It just clearly says Delivered under the message if it was delivered, and nothing if not. At that point you can long press and send as SMS message. My daughter has no issue noticing the difference, nor do other family members.
 

Izerous

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The delivered status is partly bogus though (or used to be). If the target phone is not even on it used to show as delivered. 4th dead/broken iPhone in a row that couldn't even make 2 years went to android. Phone was turned off for over a month and I could message anyone from my android phone but anyone who responded from an iPhone it would go to iMessage and say it was delivered even though it hadn't been on for over a month. I had to charge it back up, limp it a long enough to get it to unreigster iMessage so I could actually get messages from iPhone to my Android.
 

On2wheels

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IMessage is the same tho. My parents don't have data on their phones. My sisters aren't able to text them whenever they aren't home as iMessage never reverts to sms.
And they have "send as sms if imessage not available" turned on? That is the one feature that actually has been very reliable in my 8 months of using this iphone. Much more reliable than RCS was on my pixel before that.
They should just turn off imessage and use it as pure sms, that should narrow the issue down to the carrier I would think.

Currently I'm doing a battery drain test on this phone. After leaving the house Tuesday morning at the 78% charge then using it sparingly over the day with RCS enabled it was at 62% at 5pm. RCS was like a parasitic drain on my old Pixel but that battery was tiny so it was easy to notice. This 15Pro doesn't have a much bigger battery and I suspect it's behaving the same, I'll update later when I get home.

The real test would be to disable imessage and run for a day like that...
 

crazyea

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Surrey, BC
And they have "send as sms if imessage not available" turned on? That is the one feature that actually has been very reliable in my 8 months of using this iphone. Much more reliable than RCS was on my pixel before that.
They should just turn off imessage and use it as pure sms, that should narrow the issue down to the carrier I would think.

Currently I'm doing a battery drain test on this phone. After leaving the house Tuesday morning at the 78% charge then using it sparingly over the day with RCS enabled it was at 62% at 5pm. RCS was like a parasitic drain on my old Pixel but that battery was tiny so it was easy to notice. This 15Pro doesn't have a much bigger battery and I suspect it's behaving the same, I'll update later when I get home.

The real test would be to disable imessage and run for a day like that...
Send as SMS if imessage is not available is for your phone when it cant communicate with apples servers. If your kid is at school it will still try to send as imessage. At least thats how it always worked for me when my kids had android. Back then I just disabled imessage.

If you decide to disable imessage you need to also deregister imessage. https://selfsolve.apple.com/deregister-imessage/
 
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