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.
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
You’re probably getting suggestions for what she should do different because, at least at a starting point, it could just as easily be something her phone is doing before sending as it is something your phone is doing on the receiving end.
I’ve had a phone say ‘video to big, do you want to crop or share through abc app’ before. Don’t recall the exact message, but seems more likely than you phone downgrading something it’s receiving.
Cause then you won’t buy an iPhone… Duh
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
That’s why I’m kinda hoping Apple would adopt standard RCS and then the ball’s on Google for not cooperating.
Apple has indicated that it’s implementing standard RCS. That means no encryption and no weird additions.
They’re trying to get end to end encryption into the RCS standard, but the committees making that standard also have a lot of people from law enforcement agencies, so that’s never going to happen. If it does, assume there’s a backdoor in the standard.
Their proprietary extensions are for the same reason Apple took forever to implement it.
RCS still sucks.
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?
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.
They have to if they want to support payments over RCS (it’s in the spec). Gotta love telecom specifications!
Luckily that stuff isn’t too hard to get around
Texting happens over MMS. MMS is plain terrible. I think the size limit is 160KB or something like that. There are also resolution limits. My carrier has turned off MMS support a while back, so I can’t even receive media like that anymore.
iMessage works around that by not using SMS/MMS unless it really has to. Same with Google’s RCS implementation, actually.
Hopefully, once RCS for iOS lands, you’ll be able to have a modern texting experience with your wife. Until then, stick with apps like Signal, who have been developed after 2005 and therefore can carry more than four pixels of video.
It should be noted that RCS won’t be encrypted (unless both ends use the Google messages app) so it’s still worse than iMessage or Signal. However at least the memes will work.
Hopefully, once RCS for iOS lands
Only a few days left, now. Well, depends on whether your carrier allows it.
I thought the whole point of iOS was that carriers couldn’t decide about pre-installed software?
Unless you mean “if your carrier supports RCS services”; in that case a lot of people are in for a disappointing surprise.
I think the option isn’t part of the current carrier profiles, so the carriers have to update those and submit to Apple.
I think RCS comes with some autodiscovery capability (by sending a request to a magic HTTP URL over the right APN, haven’t read the spec in a while) but it does make sense that carriers push it in profiles as well.
I understand all this, but how ste the videos actually sent if it’s neither RCS nor a link (which could have any resolution).
MMS? Like caveman?
In this case, Apple and the wife are both to blame. This is
- ancient technology
- that was never really used anywhere
Come on.
Standard SMS/MMS are the de facto standard in the US, outside of iMessage. Hundreds of millions of people use it. It’s not “never really used anywhere”.
And you’re right, people have moved on from caveman technology; the youth is switching to iOS and iMessage en masse. That’s why people need to deal with shit like this, iOS users don’t know that the only reason they can text like normal people is because of Apple’s weird version of WhatsApp.
If iMessage hadn’t been sneaked into the iOS texting app, Americans may have moved over to something better as well, but they didn’t. They never felt the pressure to switch to texting apps because their carriers charged differently/less for texts than the ones in other countries.
And it did go somewhere. RCS is SMS/MMS for data networks. Carriers didn’t run RCS servers and phones didn’t come with RCS clients so it went nowhere. Until Google started hosting Jibe and including it in the messages client, that is.
Even RCS took some massaging by Google to make it actually usable as a texting standard, with Google making use of the freeform HTTP nature of the protocol to add some proprietary standards to make it actually usable. The first released versions of RCS were kind of terrible, basically MMS but over IP rather than weird telecom protocols.
I pity the fool trying to use RCS without Jibe. Luckily, carriers are shutting down their bespoke RCS servers and renting RCS services from Google instead. Unfortunately, that makes RCS a standard practically governed by Google, carriers from whatever countries Google isn’t permitted to operate in, and spying agencies.
Standard SMS/MMS are the de facto standard in the US
SMS have been used extensively around the world. That’s texting in it’s original form. And we still use SMS to bootstrap WhatsApp or Signal.
But MMS? Phones and carriers have supported this long before smartphones, but did people really use it? Are MMS free in the US? Because in Europe, before WhatsApp and Signal took over, the was a price tag on SMS (last non-zero price I remember is 0.09€, now free) and MMS (no idea because no one uses it, but I believe 0.39€ was typical at some point).
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.
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!
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.
Why are you still using sms in 2024?..
OP probably lives in North America, where texting never got displaced by messenger apps. Well, except for iMessage, but that’s a messenger app hidden behind a texting app, with confusing quirks like the terrible video quality OP reports.
Don’t worry, Google’s own Messages app does the same thing as iMessage, but using a different (and on paper more open) standard that isn’t compatible with iMessage (yet, I think the EU is forcing Apple’s hand).
the only reason Android was locked out of imessage was Apple, the only reason rcs is locked out of ios is Apple. it’s all Apple trying to keep the wall around its garden.
The EU actually ruled that iMessage isn’t a gatekeeper because it’s not used enough to be considered important for now. I do believe China is forcing phones to be RCS compliant though, so it’s still mostly about government pressure.
I’m not OP but I might as well be. My family has a group chat that exists almost exclusively to send pics/videos of the kids to each other. It’s a mixed group of android/iOS, so the videos come through with 12 pixels. I have begged and pleaded for every key to switch to telegram, GroupMe, Gchat, Facebook… ANYTHING!!
But they’re all on iPhone because they specifically don’t want to be tweaking or customizing anything in their phones.
Tell them about the app store
There’s an app for that
I fixed this, tell the grandmother, I’ll only send the pictures etc via signal.
Set it up for her, put it on the home screen.
The grandmother (my Mom) is probably the 2nd most tech-savy person in the chat. She has dug in on this on my sister’s side. It’s not a huge deal. I’ve accepted that I just need to wait till the defaults change. Any video I really care about I make her send straight to my wife.
Also, I did set my mom with an account on my immich server, but last time I had her phone iOS wasn’t playing nice with the automatic backup. I think maybe I’ll take another swing at this.
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.
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.
