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How do you send a SMS rather than iMessage

pacmania1982

pacmania1982

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Nov 19, 2006
1,246
653
Birmingham, UK
OK - so - how do you send someone a SMS rather than an iMessage? If they have iOS 5 I know it will check the recipients number, but aside from turning it off completely - is there a way to choose to send a SMS instead?

pac
 
I guess the main question is...why?

It'll show up in the same place on their phone in the same way either way. Right?

But if you really need to, there are currently many apps that let you send texts to other phones. Textie is one I know about. You could always switch to that and send a text from Textie to their phone number.
 
pacmania1982 said:
OK - so - how do you send someone a SMS rather than an iMessage? If they have iOS 5 I know it will check the recipients number, but aside from turning it off completely - is there a way to choose to send a SMS instead?

pac
Click to expand...

Doesn't appear to be a way other than turning off iMessage. Why is this an issue?
 
Settings > Message > iMessage off??

I can see this being useful with people who dont have an iPhone but have an iPod touch/iPad. People in this category aren't going to be checking their iOS devices for messages and I can see many people waiting for replies that never come as they have been sent to their iPod/iPad.
 
03jcrhr said:
Settings > Message > iMessage off??

I can see this being useful with people who dont have an iPhone but have an iPod touch/iPad. People in this category aren't going to be checking their iOS devices for messages and I can see many people waiting for replies that never come as they have been sent to their iPod/iPad.
Click to expand...

That won't happen.

If they don't have an iPhone they'll get it as an SMS message on their regular phone. What you described would never happen unless he was trying send a text to their e-mail account instead of their phone number.

But if you send it to the phone number then your scenario is not a problem.
 
grantsdale said:
Doesn't appear to be a way other than turning off iMessage. Why is this an issue?
Click to expand...

x2; it looks exactly the same (if you were color blind, you would know no different) so I'm not quite sure why you would want to, unless you are determined to use up every single text message from the plan you've paid for.
 
This would also be an issue for those with very limited data plans.
Canada is notorious for terrible plans.

(I am not saying that I am included in this group, or that iMessages take an extravagent ammount of data, an earlier poster asked why this would be an issue and I figured I would give one, no flame/troll required! :))
 
mofo-x said:
This would also be an issue for those with very limited data plans.
Canada is notorious for terrible plans.

(I am not saying that I am included in this group, or that iMessages take an extravagent ammount of data, an earlier poster asked why this would be an issue and I figured I would give one, no flame/troll required! :))
Click to expand...

A typical SMS message is roughly 1KB. So, if you send the same message with iMessage, let's say you send 10,000 iMessages a month - that's 10MB. Not to mention you can send iMessages for free on Wifi.
 
mofo-x said:
This would also be an issue for those with very limited data plans.
Canada is notorious for terrible plans.

(I am not saying that I am included in this group, or that iMessages take an extravagent ammount of data, an earlier poster asked why this would be an issue and I figured I would give one, no flame/troll required! :))
Click to expand...

iMessage will have no effect on data plans. I have the lowest (500MB) plan and I send about 2000-3000 messages a month via Whatsapp. It's only used a few MB's. iMessage will cause no harm to the data plan.
 
Peteman100 said:
Yeah, I can't think of a reason why you would actually want to send an SMS rather than an iMessage....
Click to expand...

After seeing the discussion on this on the thread I made
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1166367/

There is one reason why you would do this, if you're traveling internationally & have international texting but not Data, you wouldn't want to iMessage someone.

But in an everyday scenario, it's hard to find reasons against iMessage.
 
mofo-x said:
This would also be an issue for those with very limited data plans.
Canada is notorious for terrible plans.

(I am not saying that I am included in this group, or that iMessages take an extravagent ammount of data, an earlier poster asked why this would be an issue and I figured I would give one, no flame/troll required! :))
Click to expand...

An SMS uses about 160 bytes

8 Bits = 1 Byte
1024 Bytes = 1 KiloByte
1024 KiloBytes = 1 MegaByte
1024 MegaBytes = 1 GigaByte
1024 GigaBytes = 1 TeraByte

So this means it will take about 6500 SMS to equal 1MB
 
FSMBP said:
A typical SMS message is roughly 1KB.
Click to expand...

It's nothing like that large, probably about a quarter (unless you write war and peace). each text is a max of 160 characters, plus the GSM overhead (which isn't much, it comes to about 170-180 bytes in total). Texts longer than 160 characters are split into multiple SMS messages. There's some basic info here:

http://www.gsmfavorites.com/documents/sms/packetformat/

Or you can read the ETSI specs if you get really bored ;)

Can you tell what I do for a living? :D
 
One of the reasons that an SMS message would be better than an iMessage is spotty data service.

An SMS is sent as NRT data through the cell phone provider network. Even if you don't have a stable enough connection for a phone call or continuous data, the SMS message is small and only needs a few milliseconds to be delivered.

If it cannot be delivered immediately, the cell phone network hardware will hold the message until it can deliver it (in most cases).

If I am at starbucks or a restaraunt with crappy wifi... i may show up as 'connected' even though I am not getting any data traffic. iMessages might not get to me.

Having the option is the best way.
 
fat jez said:
It's nothing like that large, probably about a quarter (unless you write war and peace). each text is a max of 160 characters, plus the GSM overhead (which isn't much, it comes to about 170-180 bytes in total). Texts longer than 160 characters are split into multiple SMS messages. There's some basic info here:

http://www.gsmfavorites.com/documents/sms/packetformat/

Or you can read the ETSI specs if you get really bored ;)

Can you tell what I do for a living? :D
Click to expand...

Haha, I know :) I just said 1KB because it's just a nice even number & that it overstates the size of SMS (to play it safe when counting for data).
 
Will there be anyway for my wife to text me and it simultaneously goes to both my iPhone and iPad? And if I read it on my iPhone, will it be marked as read on my iPad?
 
radiogoober said:
Will there be anyway for my wife to text me and it simultaneously goes to both my iPhone and iPad? And if I read it on my iPhone, will it be marked as read on my iPad?
Click to expand...

I think that is the idea. However, I know in these Betas that it sometimes doesn't mark it being as read on all your Devices.
 
geiman said:
x2; it looks exactly the same (if you were color blind, you would know no different) so I'm not quite sure why you would want to, unless you are determined to use up every single text message from the plan you've paid for.
Click to expand...

well for colourblind people, it says in the text box whether it's an iMessage or not :)

Tarzanman said:
One of the reasons that an SMS message would be better than an iMessage is spotty data service.

An SMS is sent as NRT data through the cell phone provider network. Even if you don't have a stable enough connection for a phone call or continuous data, the SMS message is small and only needs a few milliseconds to be delivered.

If it cannot be delivered immediately, the cell phone network hardware will hold the message until it can deliver it (in most cases).
Click to expand...

messages will send it as an SMS if it can't send as an iMessage, so if you have no data service, it will ask if you want to send as an SMS instead
 
Tarzanman said:
One of the reasons that an SMS message would be better than an iMessage is spotty data service.

An SMS is sent as NRT data through the cell phone provider network. Even if you don't have a stable enough connection for a phone call or continuous data, the SMS message is small and only needs a few milliseconds to be delivered.

If it cannot be delivered immediately, the cell phone network hardware will hold the message until it can deliver it (in most cases).

If I am at starbucks or a restaraunt with crappy wifi... i may show up as 'connected' even though I am not getting any data traffic. iMessages might not get to me.

Having the option is the best way.
Click to expand...


Exactly. I travel a lot - in Europe and the US and when I'm abroad I generally don't have data. The reason I ask the question is I have roaming off abroad and was wandering if I'm roaming on a foreign network and I want to send someone a message, I'd rather be able to choose SMS or iMessage (if I'm in a hotel with WiFi or I find some free WiFi somewhere). I don't want a whole bunch of messages being queued up waiting to be sent.

I think its a bit convoluted that the only way around this seems to be turning off iMessage. Unless it knows as there is no data.

Thanks for all the replies so far

pac
 
Peteman100 said:
Yeah, I can't think of a reason why you would actually want to send an SMS rather than an iMessage....
Click to expand...

i can, i dont like the fact that they can see if you read the mesg or not. sometimes you wanna avoid talking to someone...
 
Jonk1183 said:
i can, i dont like the fact that they can see if you read the mesg or not. sometimes you wanna avoid talking to someone...
Click to expand...

See clingy girl for example. All the more bitching you get when you get the text saying "It says you read it then why didn't you respond!!!! AHAHHAFGADSJGDSAJKGKDJS :mad: :(".
 
pacmania1982 said:
Exactly. I travel a lot - in Europe and the US and when I'm abroad I generally don't have data. The reason I ask the question is I have roaming off abroad and was wandering if I'm roaming on a foreign network and I want to send someone a message, I'd rather be able to choose SMS or iMessage (if I'm in a hotel with WiFi or I find some free WiFi somewhere). I don't want a whole bunch of messages being queued up waiting to be sent.
Click to expand...

if you have data roaming turned off whilst abroad, it would default to SMS since you wouldn't be connected to a data network....

Jonk1183 said:
i can, i dont like the fact that they can see if you read the mesg or not. sometimes you wanna avoid talking to someone...
Click to expand...

by default sending read receipts is turned off, so unless you turn it on, they'd never know........
 
yeah I can think of a reason you would want to send an SMS over an iMessage:

you're on your iPhone iMessaging someone on their iPad (or iPod Touch) all well and good, then they have to go out, obviously they leave their iPad at home and pick up their phone to take with them. (it doesn't even have to be another mobile, it could be an iPhone but they don't have data turned on).
If you then want to message them you know you would have to use SMS but it will want to send it as an iMessage as their iPad is connected to their wifi at home.
as I understand it this would be a problem if the iMessaging email address and mobile number were under the same contact. so splitting the contact in two would solve the problem (but splitting a contact is hardly ideal).

has anyone tried, say, long pressing on the send button when it is in iMessaging to see if it gives you different sending options? or trying out this scenario out?
 
It should do it automatically..

If you're in spotty location imessage will usually not work and will switch to sms automatically..
 

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