It has many of the same features that iMessage added but in a more open standard that can be implemented by other phone makers. RCS is basically a new standard to work alongside MMS and SMS. iMessage won’t come to Android, but many of the features that make iMessage special also exist on the default messenger for many Android phones thanks to RCS. And just to make sure you know that you’re talking with someone who hasn’t paid Apple hundreds of dollars, any messages sent that way show up as the dreaded green bubble, rather than the blue that is granted to other iPhone users.

When an iPhone sends a message to an Android device – or vice versa – iMessage reverts back to the older SMS and MMS standards, with all the flaws and limitations that come along with those. That’s why videos sent between iPhones look so much better than videos sent between an iPhone and an Android phone. iMessage’s end-to-end encryption helps keep messages more secure, while the service’s utilization of the internet allows much larger files to be sent – up to 100MB per message.

Even though there are still a few features on our iMessage wish list, Apple does a lot of things right with its messaging service. iMessage’s key featuresĪsk anyone who uses iMessage and they will probably say that they love it. SMS and MMS messages also lack things like guaranteed delivery, so these texts can be left undelivered.

This may result in photos that look okay, but that’s just not enough data to send good-looking videos. Therefore, files sent over MMS are heavily compressed. Up to 40 seconds of video are supported, but carriers’ maximum supported size for these files is about 1MB. MMS builds on top of that with support for photos, videos, and audio messages – but the maximum file sizes are extremely limited. SMS supports messages up to 160 characters. The SMS and MMS standards are what most of us know as “texting.” SMS is short message service, while MMS is multimedia message service.

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