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How Important is iMessage to You?

E

El3ctronics

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Mar 30, 2011
1,017
40
NYC
I'm just curious how many people consider iMessage a major feature of iOS and how many consider it negligible compared to standard SMS or other mobile chat applications. For me, it's truly been a game changer and one of the reasons that every time I try an Android device, I'm always pulled back to iOS.

The fact that most of my colleagues and friends use iPhones means we could easily contact each other even when traveling internationally, allows for group chats, delivered/read receipts, and allows us to lower or even ditch our SMS plan. I didn't think iMessage would be AS significant to me as it has become. It's similar to when everyone had blackberries and used BBM and I'm glad that iOS now has its own built in mobile chat platform.
 
I like the unlimited # of letters in one message that is the major selling point for me. Also seeing if the message is delivered is great because you know the person got it.
 
Not that important.

Most of my friends have got Android phones and my monthly allowance is plenty big enough to cover the amount of messages I send. I can see why it's attractive to a lot of people though.
 
Among the significant reasons I haven't tried another OS. Nearly all of my text messages are to iPhones so I can keep my grandfathered $5 text plan with AT&T. And as Arnezie mentioned, having no character limit and delivery confirmation are real pluses. It's also nice at my young daughter can send me a message from her iPad--one less reason to get her a cell phone :D.
 
It's huge for me. I always used to text very little because of the cost. I just told people to e-mail me instead.

With iMessage I can finally send texts without worrying about the price. Nearly everyone I regularly text with uses an iPhone, though, so I'm probably lucky in that regard.

(I still pay for 200 texts, and looking at my account it seems I use close to all of them, but I'd guess I send thousands of iMessages per month. The 200 used to be ALL I did, now it's just a small percentage.)
 
I used to have the 200 texts for $5 with AT&T but I consistantly went over. So I upgraded to the 1000 for $10. Then iMessage came out and all the texts to iDevice users no longer count towards my limit. So now I only send like 100 texts to non iDevices a month and that costs me $10. Ugh!
 
Not that big a deal to me. I rarely text anyone besides my wife and kids, and we're all on the same plan and all have unlimited texting.
 
Used it a few times in the iOS 5 beta and then disabled it.

It's too unreliable. Nothing can beat the simplicity and inherent reliability of SMS.
 
very very important. It cuts down on my texting bills considerably, even though i have the 1500 text plan, i use much less. I'm also considering moving overseas next year so that will be CRUCIAL to my texting abilities.
 
top notch important to me. i use it everyday with family and friends, also whatsapp is the second one i use the most
 
At first I thought iMessage would be a huge deal to me. But.....

1. It's been very buggy for me. Often times a text will go through as an iMessage and then revert back to 'sent as text'. Especially when texting internationally.

2. There are apps (like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger) that do the same thing as iMessage.

I appreciate iMessage and do find it useful with my iPhone using friends. However such a feature would not stop me from jumping over to Android potentially down the road.
 
I love iMessage. Considering I have an iPod touch with wifi most times, it's even better than my alternative (Textfree) to text family and friends because I can see when the message is recieved, read and when they're replying. And it's fast. :D
 
How much nicer are the blue text bubbles over e green? Also iMessage is only in its beginning stage. We will see what they bring to iMessage and see if there are more additions
 
SMS is nice, and yes, it's a lowest common denominator that reaches all, but the seamlessness of having iMessage when it's available it a huge plus for me. And I've found that I'm sending WAY less SMS/MMS messages now, and I'd say 90% of my text traffic is now iMessage. But I think this seamlessness (on the iPhone anyway) is a huge draw over BBM: with the former, it goes through iMessage if it can and if not, SMS is the automatic fallback. With BBM, you *have* to choose, you HAVE to know if the recipient has a Blackberry, you HAVE to know their PIN and put it in for it to work.

I didn't think iMessage would be that big a deal for me at all, but with most of my friends/colleagues having iPhones now, I've used it quite a bit. The return receipts are nice, significantly more useful than I thought they would be. Sending over work/home wifi completely cuts AT&T or whatever wireless carrier out of the picture, which I think is also a nice plus. And group messaging is fast. Again these are all things I thought I was fine doing without, but now I'd definitely miss if I couldn't use iMessage.

And, for me, it's BIG deal to be able to send/receive messages on multiple devices. My phone, iPad and Mac can all be used for this purpose, and that's an awesome thing.

For the longest time, I've wanted to be able to compose texts on a computer, or some other device "synced" to my phone. Because no matter how good a mobile keypad is, a full size keyboard will always trump it and make sending messages that much easier. This is something I haven't been able to do since I hooked up my old Motorola E815 to my desktop via serial port, and tried to send/receive message that way... very awkward.

But now, there's no need to tether my phone to something else to send messages that way. Between the iPad and the Messages app for the Mac, communicating by text has gotten a lot more useful to me.

I still use plain old SMS, in cases where I'm texting to someone without an Apple-based device, but the difference is totally noticeable. it's hard to explain, but you see your message in green, and there's a kinda limiting feeling to it. And the loss of that "delivered" confirmation is a bigger deal than I thought it would be.

So, I get now, why Blackberry users loved BBM so much. I still would never use BBM because I find iMessage (and just about everything else on iOS over Blackberry) to be better, but I think I now understand the draw it had.
 
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It's huge. Delivery notifications, and better quality video/pictures are gold. I hate how much standard SMS compresses things. That, and I've found it more reliable than standard SMS. If I come out of the subway, or my phone was off, it may take some time before a standard SMS gets to me, but as soon as I get service again the iMessages always immediately pop up.
 
Not that important to me. I like the instant delivery, the "delivered/read" feature, and longer message length. But there have been many times when it simply didn't work, iMessages never got sent, or had to be manually resent as text messages. That being said, I have unlimited texting, so its not a big deal.
 
I don't really care but I do like how pics send faster over wifi. The main thing I like about texting on the iPhone is how conversations are organized into a chat room with multiple people. On my Razr it's a mess and I've yet to find an app to correct this.
 
Not a must have for me, most ppl i know have unlimited txt plans and SMS i find is more reliable then iMessage.

For overseas friends i use whatsapp as it's cross platform.
 
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