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.
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.
You’ll need a third party messaging app. Like Signal or WhatsApp.
Yeah, why the hell is OP using SMS?
Probably because they’re from the U.S. where SMS is still used extensively for messaging.
signal is the way
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.
Welcome to 2008, apple
Fucking honestly - it’s the theme for their whole product line
To be far, apple has had iMessage since 2011 and no one cared about RCS until it was adopted on Android in 2019.
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.
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
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.
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.
iPhones tend to have pretty shit cameras compared to Samsungs - it’s not just purely a question of pixels but lense quality as well.
That’s hilariously out of touch with reality and also not the issue he’s talking about.
Anything over MMS gets compressed insane amounts.
I have an iPhone and whenever my Android-owning friend sends me something, it’s a tiny thumbnail of a photo. So yeah, goes both ways.
The trick is to send a link to the photo or video instead of the actual file. This is also how iPhone users can use FaceTime with people on other platforms.
That wouldn’t be an issue today if Apple had started supporting RCS, the replacement for the old SMS/MMS system years ago like every Android phone. Instead of trying to strangle it by acting like iMessage on iOS was the only solution.
RCS has been around since 2008 and got Universal Profile specifications in 2016.
It took Google until 2019 to get RCS out, and they include proprietary Google extensions that may or may not be supported by other providers, further complicating rollout of RCS.
They’re genuinely not somehow way better in this regard.
Well I’ve been able to RCS with basically everyone on an android phone since 2019 with almost no issues. That’s 5 years now.
I don’t really care how Apple wants to try and justify it. The answer is they don’t want to add support for an alternative to their walled garden proprietary system that no one else can use. They want to force everyone onto an iPhone and iMessage if possible. The only reason they’re even looking at RCS support now is because of regulators starting to look at their glaring lack of support for interoperability.
That’s because almost everyone on an Android phone is using Google Jibe for RCS, they even turned it on through software for carriers that didn’t support it. It’s not surprising that a Google competitor didn’t jump to implement Jibe.
Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T all ditched their own RCS, they also use Google RCS. They’ve positioned themselves central to the entire stack.
And absolutely zero users care about the reasons. They only know that sending messages back and forth is dogshit.
The source of the lack of support across is Apple not wanting to even try because they want everyone to use their proprietary system on their devices instead. Google at least implemented a system to get RCS support to as many devices as they could, even when carriers didn’t do anything to help. Apple instead had to be threatened by regulators before they even began to consider looking at it.
“As many devices as they could” with Google at the center of nearly all of it (and if you want all the features, you want the Google one). This isn’t done out of altruism.
Use Whatsapp or another 3rd party messenger. It’s annoying but an easy solution.
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…
It’s because Apple has refused to adopt new messaging standards like RCS (not that Google is doing that much of a better job), but it’s purposefully broken interoperability to force people into buying into product ecosystems (iPhone vs. Android) to make you stick with one and get stuck on it.
It’s stupid anti-competitive and I freakin’ hate it.
Literally doesn’t have to be this way, it’s a choice (mostly by Apple, but once again doesn’t mean Google is better).
https://www.theverge.com/2024/6/15/24178470/apple-rcs-support-wwdc-announcement-android-imessage
Apple was largely forced to support RCS in response to the mounting pressure from global regulators and competing companies. That may help explain the somewhat disgruntled approach to announcing its rollout in iOS 18.
https://www.tomsguide.com/how-to-switch-on-rcs-messaging-in-ios-18
Here’s a walkthrough to ensure RCS is enabled on your wife’s iPhone, once iOS 18 drops in the next month or so.
RCS is quite terrible. Very few carriers still host RCS services. The only reason it works is because Google decided “fuck it, if you guys won’t provide RCS, we’ll just set up our own server for everyone to use”.
My country has a total of 0 carriers that run RCS servers. Only Vodafone had them, and they shut them down, because nobody used them. Everyone who uses RCS here uses Google’s servers. Wikipedia still lists carriers that have shut down RCS services so even the limited list of RCS capable carriers looks bigger than it is in reality.
I don’t know how Apple will implement RCS, but if they use carrier services (which, by the way, often are rented from Google as well), there’s a good chance RCS still won’t work. The only reliable way for Apple to add RCS is to copy what Google did and host an RCS server themselves.
I’m glad Apple is finally adding support, but I don’t blame them given how absolutely terrible the uptake among carriers was.
Honestly, I’d rather have Apple open up iMessage than for them to enable RCS, but regulatory pressure from China has made them include RCS anyway, so they might as well support it in the rest of the world.
To be fair, this is only a problem in countries where texting never died. In a lot of countries, apps like WhatsApp have taken over the role of the standard messenger over a decade ago, and everyone has one or more messaging apps they actually use.
The funny thing about RCS is that it’s not encrypted, and is designed to be run in carrier networks, where law enforcement agencies can read every message sent back and forth. If RCS had been taken up rather than WhatsApp or Line or any other competitor, our privacy situation would actually be much worse. In a way, I’m kind of thankful for RCS being so terrible.
Google will also try to block you from their RCS servers if they detect you’re rooted, causing your messages to be silently downgraded. It’s pretty bad.
Don’t forget to add in the primary reason they don’t want to implement it is exactly because of comment’s like OPs, because it makes it look like Android phones are the problem. Most people assume that it’s because it’s an android it doesn’t work right, and so everyone should just have iPhones. Why fix what is already great marketing for them, even if it is a complete lie?
A lot of RCS is using Google Jibe, it’s one of the ways they were able to roll it out so fast not necessarily with carrier support. I can’t fault them too much for not immediately embracing it. Based on the Toms Hardware link it looks like they are depending on carrier hubs. For me that means I may not get support for a long time as an MVNO user.
The Google proprietary extensions in their implementation of RCS is honestly pretty crappy imho as well. Neither of these companies are “good guys” in terms of RCS standards.
Their proprietary extensions are for the same reason Apple took forever to implement it.
RCS still sucks.
That’s why I’m kinda hoping Apple would adopt standard RCS and then the ball’s on Google for not cooperating.
Ah, so Google is taking the Microsoft approach to embrace and extend, but don’t share. Gross.
Eh, no one else is doing anything to provide support apart from Google either. Anyone else could do their own thing, no one is prevented from their own support. But very few companies and carriers even began to develop support for RCS, even after the Universal Profile. That is why Google developed their own support and built that support into the native app.
Verizon had their own RCS support via a proprietary carrier-specific app that never worked with anyone outside Verizon as far as I remember, and they dropped it in favor of Google’s option as soon as that was available. Samsung had their own RCS support in their proprietary Messaging app, also dropped because Google provides the same support on all of their products and Samsung doesn’t have to do anything or support it in any way. Google now provides an option for all Android devices specifically because almost no one was adding support on their own.
Anyone can, no one else will, because they have no reason to. The average user doesn’t care whether it’s Google, their carrier, or the manufacturer providing support for sending high quality photos to their friend’s phone number as long as it works.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
+1 for Signal. I converted everyone in my friends and family circle to it …except one person, but I just ignore their texts.
It’s not private given that they require your phone number to sign up.
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
+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.
Apple intentionally makes iPhone-Android interoperability crap in order to sell iPhones. That’s not conspiracy theorizing, Tim Apple blatantly admitted to it.
https://www.theverge.com/2022/9/7/23342243/tim-cook-apple-rcs-imessage-android-iphone-compatibility
