Those of use who have friends or groups of friends that use iPhones but us ourselves do not. In the US, iMessage is the #1 way to create a group chat, and if you don't have an iPhone you're often just excluded and rely on someone else to update you about plans, etc.
You can create a group chat using standard MMS. I have never heard of this being a problem.
Like I said, maybe I'm out of the loop or just lucky.
Meanwhile, in the UK WhatsApp is the default
That's worse as it doesn't even have sms
You would be right if SMS was still relevant in Europe (and asia and africa, I think). That would be kind of like saying a phone isn't very good because it doesn't support usenet.
Well nothing else is standardized in the same way SMS is. I don't want to be forced into one application. SMS and MMS are older but they work across all devices.
There are plenty of standardized communication protocols. There are far less in the smartphone world, which is why we have this problem. Imagine if you couldn't do voice calls between AT&T and Comcast, North America and Europe, or Apple and Android. Now why on earth would anyone think that text messaging should be that way, or shouldn't have been standardized decades ago?
Maybe I'm missing your point. You can make calls anywhere because its a standard. It doesn't matter if you have a flip phone, android, apple or something totally different. It just works. Additionally everyone uses it already so you don't need to try to convert people to a new standard.
Those of use who have friends or groups of friends that use iPhones but us ourselves do not. In the US, iMessage is the #1 way to create a group chat, and if you don't have an iPhone you're often just excluded and rely on someone else to update you about plans, etc.
You can create a group chat using standard MMS. I have never heard of this being a problem.
Like I said, maybe I'm out of the loop or just lucky.
Meanwhile, in the UK WhatsApp is the default
That's worse as it doesn't even have sms
You would be right if SMS was still relevant in Europe (and asia and africa, I think). That would be kind of like saying a phone isn't very good because it doesn't support usenet.
Well nothing else is standardized in the same way SMS is. I don't want to be forced into one application. SMS and MMS are older but they work across all devices.
There are plenty of standardized communication protocols. There are far less in the smartphone world, which is why we have this problem. Imagine if you couldn't do voice calls between AT&T and Comcast, North America and Europe, or Apple and Android. Now why on earth would anyone think that text messaging should be that way, or shouldn't have been standardized decades ago?
Maybe I'm missing your point. You can make calls anywhere because its a standard. It doesn't matter if you have a flip phone, android, apple or something totally different. It just works. Additionally everyone uses it already so you don't need to try to convert people to a new standard.