That should work now because of RCS.

Email is secure enough though. People make up security rules in their heads all the time, doesn't mean it's true.

Tbh Apple's RCS implementation is so buggy it almost has me on the "they added bugs to keep people off of it" conspiracy train.

As in, during a conversation my phone would send RCS and the iPhone would reply with SMS only. This has happened multiple times with multiple people, and some where RCS won't let us communicate - the messages just disappear into the void, but only when sent from the iPhone.

https://i.imgur.com/FrMfECA.png

This happens in Android to Android too, especially with Samsung Messages.

A lot of carrier's RCS implementations are buggy.

apple has intentionally handicapped rcs and it is still ongoing

If you're in the U.S. and a "government agent" told you to use iMessage, you are 100% being scammed. No way they would accept anything less secure than a fax message or a document portal that looks like it was set up in the 90's.

It was certainly not a scam as the process completed successfully after iMessage-ing the required documents.

It wasn't the US though, yeah, but rather some american working for a foreign country's government.

Sending a message should just default to MMS, which I agree is lower quality especially for videos, but shouldn't get an error. I'm in multiple group chats with Android users and it's fine other than videos, which are from 2005.

I think SMS/MMS should just go away entirely though.

On my device it always gives me an error telling me to turn on MMS, which is turned on of course.

No, rebooting the phone doesn’t change anything, thanks for suggesting it

What are you talking about? Photos have worked in MSS group chats for 10+ years now. They send as shit quality but they work. And now mixed group chats are RCS which has all the important features of iMessage.

The error tells me to turn on MMS, which is already on.

RCS isn’t an obvious option anywhere

Settings > Apps > Messages > RCS Messaging

If it isn't there, About > Settings > General > About and tap the Carrier row. If it doesn't say RCS, the carrier doesn't support it.

Also one should note, MMS also requires carrier support and a few carriers don't support it in some countries.

There's a list of supported features for carriers worldwide at https://support.apple.com/en-gb/108048

Got it, I'll move to a country that supports RCS at my earliest convenience, and also not message anyone while I'm roaming to another carrier on vacation.

My carrier should support MMS, but I haven't yet had it work (and inbound messages to my number, like the picture of a family-member's wedding invite sent to my phone number, just silently vanish into the void)... I just kinda assumed it was working as expected since I'd heard so much about the green bubble issues.