Edit: NOTE, I am the receiver of the texts.
So many people asking me to have my wife do something different on her end.
Beloved, she is on iPhone because she doesn’t want to do anything “weird.” She is texting from her phone number using her texting app. That’s what’s going to happen.
Now, why can’t I get iMessage on my android phone? If it’s just a messenger app why not make it available for Android?
I’d use it.
Messaging between iPhones uses iMessage and messaging between android probably uses RCS, both of which do not have the limitations of MMS, which is a limit of around 3.5 MB for most carriers. “Texting” pictures and videos from iPhone to android or vice versa will likely use MMS, hence the blurry media. Until Apple joins the party, the solution is to use another app like WhatsApp, telegram, signal, etc.
SMS/MMS has really low file size limits, and iPhones may downscale a little more aggressively than required.
Just pick an internet based messaging service. I like Signal, but they all work.
The next version of iOS should add support for RCS which should allow for cross platform larger images as well.
Do you mean should add RCS as in they’re expected to, or should add RCS as in “that would be wise”?
It is expected, it is already in the betas but may also require carriers to enable it as some beta testers found it wasn’t available to them initially.
Welcome to 2008, apple
To be far, apple has had iMessage since 2011 and no one cared about RCS until it was adopted on Android in 2019.
To be additionally fair, Android still has phones out there in use that still dont have the RCS feature, and never will because those phones are no longer supported.
The same is true of iPhones
With a 5 year support cycle on iOS devices getting OS updates, ALL of the iPhones going back to 2019 (when it was added to android) will likely support RCS
i have an iphone xs (2018) that’s getting rcs, even
Because imessage is proprietary and apple is against it being publicly available and a standard.
(So are Google’s extensions to RCS)
Yes but it wasn’t marketed that way. Which is why there is more interest.
Apple has been blatantly obvious that they want it to remain proprietary and exclusively on their hardware.
This is true, Google has cared less about the hardware and more about being the platform to run all of it. Not all that different than Android in that regard.
I’m still not sure why people are so quick to jump on board though. You can degoogle Android, it’s much harder to degoogle RCS.
Fucking honestly - it’s the theme for their whole product line
RCS from what I can tell still has some significant limitations, like the version common on Android having some Google proprietary extensions it’s not clear if other vendors will fully support. I’d still recommend something like Signal to most people, though RCS improves the experience for those not using that.
It’s all a huge mess… Apple is complying with the RCS spec, but isn’t using Google’s proprietary encryption method because it’s proprietary. Google also won’t open the API on Android to allow for 3rd party RCS apps. So until Google decides to abandon their stronghold over the encryption standard and API access, RCS will continue to suck from a privacy standpoint.
I haven’t been following the RCS story closely. My impression is it’s a standard core on which each provider can tack on nonstandard extensions, and somehow carriers are involved even though it’s internet-based. It sounds like people who won’t adopt third-party internet messaging apps are going to continue to have a bad time.
The real reason: Apple intentionally doesn’t support the open protocols that send pics and videos to non-Apple devices. These protocols are a decade old and work great. They use a proprietary protocol instead, which they will not share with other phone manufacturers.
What the average iPhone user thinks: Apple is better than Android!
It’s pretty dumb.
The thing is, Apple phones do support these things, but only if they change the default messenger app, and most Apple users won’t do that. IPhone users are worse than Windows users when It comes to changing their default apps.
If you mean changing which app natively gets used for texting, that’s not something you can do on iOS. You can choose to open a different app, but if I tell Siri to text someone it will always 100% without a doubt no way to circumvent it use the standard Messages app. iOS doesn’t let you change your default for texts.
Hell, they only allow you to change your default web browser because they were dragged into court kicking and screaming. And even then, all third-party browsers are forced to use Safari’s engine for the backend, and aren’t allowed to use their own engines. Even Chrome, Firefox, and Brave are just reskins of Safari on iOS. And even then, any apps that open an in-app browser will still use Safari even when your default browser is different. For instance, I’m browsing lemmy on Voyager, and it opens all links in a built in Safari browser, (even though my default browser is set to Firefox.)
Unless I did a really poor job researching it, you cannot change your default SMS/MMS application on an iPhone.
You can use other messaging apps like Signal, Whatsapp, Telegram, or AIM. But if you want to use SMS, you have to use iMessage.
Maybe this is US-specific though. Europe often forces Apple to do things they don’t do here.
Apple dragged their feet for years in implementing RCS.
Not that surprising. Google Jibe is the largest player in RCS. Samsung created their own RCS alternative to Jibe and there are a few others, but Google is hands down the dominant platform. Apple had their own thing already, not exactly jumping to integrate Google Jibe or create another product isn’t surprising.
Samsung had support before Google and Jibe… but they have abandoned their own RCS support. Simply because Google’s works on all of their devices and they don’t need to do any development to support it going forwards. Why pay for development and support for a system you don’t have to and get nothing from? No one is buying a Samsung phone for the Samsung Messages RCS capability.
What do the videos look like on her phone?
If they’re shit there, it’s the phone (or the operator). If they look good there and change to shit when they get to your phone, it’s something in that process. Perhaps set to send a low res version by default.
It’s fine, great on her phone. After sending to me it’s unwatchable.
Apple doesn’t do RCS. This should be changing soon, but for now you should be using another messaging app, because everything you send is unencrypted and shittier quality
It also depends on the carrier. Girlfriend has iOS 18 Beta and RCS option is missing.
they use proprietary file formats (MOV and HEIC) that need to be converted to a universal format like jpg or MP4 to be viewed on android (I think this can be changed in iPhone settings), and the conversion looks like shit
It’s very funny you say MOV and HEIC are proprietary and then list MP4 considering
- HEIC is just H.265, the video codec, used to encode images
- H.264, the codec used for most mp4 files has the same license as H.265 with patent bullshit license fees going on
- MP4 container is pretty similar to MOV, and is also not an open standard
- this also means MOV and MP4 can be losslessly converted
- Apple provides documentation for MOV format free of charge while ISO really wants you to pay to get official standard PDF
- All this doesn’t matter anyway because ffmpeg can decode everything (though I guess it might matter in bizarro land where software patents are a thing)
Also Android can totally read at least HEIC images. Not sure about MOV. Any of this is also not related to the problem the OP has.
HEIC is not proprietary to Apple at all, they were just one of the early adopters of it.
My Android phone takes pictures in HEIC/HEIF by default, and it’s not nearly as much of a problem anymore almost all software can handle the format now.
Its due to compression of the video in order to fit on a MMS message, which is very small. Android uses RCS as a new message standard that can send bigger files but Apple has yet to add it to their OS. Its similar to how Apple uses iMessage to do the same, however this is not a standard and is locked to only apple devices.
Apple is supposedly adding support for RCS during the new iOS update but until then you can use a different messaging app to send better/larger files.
I recommend Signal as it is easy to sign up and start using while also being private.
It’s not private given that they require your phone number to sign up.
I think you are confusing private with anonymous. One can be private without being anonymous.
+1 for Signal. I converted everyone in my friends and family circle to it …except one person, but I just ignore their texts.
+1 signal fills the gap perfectly
I like and use signal, but of course the problem is convincing someone else to start using it in order to send you a message.
I’d hope that’s not terribly hard when the people in question are married to each other.
Wait until you have to merge dishwasher loading preferences into a single save file.
Also messenger apps like Signal often have a setting to send higher quality (less compressed) videos which are bigger in size.
In signal it’s Settings > Data and storage > Sent media qualify
You both use Signal, problem solved.
Me and my wife do this and its pretty much the only person we talk to on there.
Its got some nice features to keep track of images and such. I was surprised she went for it really, usually 99% of the ideas I mention to her get turned down lol
Oh forgot to add, we also have android and iOS.
I had to double check that I didn’t write this because those words could have literally come from my fingers.
I’m also the signal guy amongst my friends and family. There are dozens of us!
One of my wife’s friends started a group chat there for some reason. Maybe the facebook app attacked them? Who knows but its catching on!
I think everyone has explained the how and why, but not any real solutions that don’t involve using a completely different application. I don’t have an iPhone in front of me, but with Android you can share as a link to Google Photos instead of sending the picture/video directly. I am pretty sure you can do something similar with iCloud. Have her try the share as iCloud link instead.
How is that a better solution than using another messenger app?
Its less private thats for sure.
Its less private thats for sure.
signal is the way
Apple isn’t doing everything it can to optimize the quality of videos iPhones send or receive over MMS. Video quality between Android phones, even over MMS, is much better.
So many people asking me to have my wife do something different on her end. Beloved, she is on iPhone because she doesn’t want to do anything “weird.”
Assuming using a third-party messaging app is “weird”, then she can’t send you video with acceptable quality. That’s how it is.
She can’t fix that. You can’t fix that. None of the readers here can fix that unless they work at Apple. This may improve in the future when Apple adopts RCS, but there’s a lot that real-world implementations of RCS do that isn’t in the standard, so the full details of interoperability are uncertain until we see it in the wild.
Now, why can’t I get iMessage on my android phone?
Because Apple doesn’t want you to. Apple wants situations like this one to pressure people to buy iPhones because that’s apparently easier for some people than agreeing on a messaging app.
The answer is as others have stated appl not supporting the open standard RCS.
I will elaborate with apple are deliberately dragging their feet supporting standards as a deliberate attempt to put social pressure on you to buy an iphone.
an audience member asked Apple CEO Tim Cook for some tech support. “I can’t send my mom certain videos,” he said; she used an Android device, which means she can’t access Apple’s iMessage. Cook’s now-infamous response: “Buy your mom an iPhone.”
The Apple Antitrust Case and the ‘Stigma’ of the Green Bubble
The solutions others have suggested of installing other messaging apps like signal will work but I will suggest another; Buy your wife an Android.
THE solution is not to buy the wife an Android, that is ONE solution.
In total, there are a few solutions, I number them to make it easier to refer to them, not to order them from best to worst.
- Get yourself an iPhone
- Get your wife an Android
- Wait for iOS 18
- Switch to a messaging app like Element or Signal.
1 and 2: Unless you yourself can accept switching to using the other system, it is unfair to demand that the other part does that.
I have tried to switch to Android, I did it back in 2019, but I just disliked the feel of the OS enough that after dropping my phone and smashing the screen after 2-3 months, I didn’t even bother to get it fixed, I just moved back to my iPhone.
- iOS 18 will have RCS, and will probably solve this.
Great argument!
“NO! YOU MUST FORCE EVERYONE IN YOUR VICINITY TO USE SIGNAL. USE SIGNAL. IF SOMEONE YOU KNOW DOESN’T USE SIGNAL, KILL THEM.”
This entire thread.
Looks fully functional to me!
Apple will support RCS in the next iOS 18, so maybe they can just wait a month.
There’s a solution nobody has mentioned yet, which is using an iMessage bridge application (allowing you to message iPhone users over iMessage). If you have a machine running MacOS, I just started using one called OpenBubbles that works great and, unlike other bridges (AirMessage or BlueBubbles), doesn’t require you to spin up and run a Mac as a server.
Alternatively, iOS 18 drops this month and has support for RCS, as some have mentioned. This is assuming you use Google Messages…
