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Chat Apps
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I use the apps my friends use but it gets tiring to keep up with so many.
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this post was submitted on 04 Mar 2024
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Somebody please tell me what's wrong with just texting? Why did half the world decide MMS needed to be replaced with a proprietary app? It works, everyone has it and there's no confusion. Unless you are concerned about privacy or something, why not just text?
Edit: MMS not SMS. I didn't understand the difference.
SMS doesn't handle pictures, videos, gifs, reactions, or group conversations. Things I use all the time. MMS handles some of that, but implementation varies greatly by carrier and device. If you want consistency of that functionality, you have to go with an app. Apple and Google have created replacements for SMS and MMS that could be the next version of "texting" but Apple refuses to let anyone else use theirs (iMessage) and Google has only half opened up theirs (RCS), so those don't really fix much.
(I guess I don't know the difference between SMS and MMS.)
I must be using MMS for texting. All of those features work for me and anyone I text with. The only issue I've ever had is imessage compressing videos to and from my android.
I still don't get it
This article does a pretty good job differentiating SMS, MMS, RCS, and iMessages
It's unencrypted and we know with certainly that the messages are stored by federal agencies and cell carriers. It also requires giving out one's phone number which may be undesirable in some situations
If you have friends in another country, it might cost a quarter every time you send a message.
In regions of the world (e.g. Europe, and a lot of Asia) where some countries are the size of a large city (or perhaps the entire country is one city), that's a problem. You'd be sending international texts all day every day.
SMS is even worse in terms of openness. You won't find a modem that runs open source baseband firmware. It's because the radios are subject to several regulations which means customers can't be able to modify that firmware.
Wait until everyone and their dogs gets back to MMS...
You know how expensive they were during the upcoming of WhatsApp? Germany paid 0,80€ (at the time. Though the price is probably not much different during the early iPhone/Android 2.3 times) per picture. Compare that to the amount of stuff sent today and at the time you will probably pay 5€ per day just to get some things across.
Source: https://www.derstandard.at/story/1747665/deutschland-hohe-preise-fuer-mms-verderben-das-geschaeft
It's ironic that Europe adopted SMS years before we did in America because texting was absurdly expensive here. I remember paying $0.25/SMS back in 2003 or so (it dropped to a comparable bargain of $0.10/SMS after you sent 20 messages in a month), plus we had to pay to both send and receive them. I remember having to pay my parents $20/mo extra just to have unlimited SMS/MMS on my line only a couple years later once I was old enough to get a job.
I'm surprised that Europe kept up per message charges for MMS so long, they were basically always billed at the same rate as SMS here.
It's just that almost every phone plan includes sms (dunno about mms) nowadays. So it's a no brainer and those that are getting pre paid sims probably only need it for calling anyways.
MMS is still 0.37€ for me right now (SMS is free though). Completely unacceptable.
MMS doesn't have much bandwidth available and it'll just compress instead of failing to send, so even android to android if you send a long enough HD video the recipient will get compressed garbage. Then, of course, there's the fact any videos sent over MMS from android to an iPhone(and vice versa iirc) becomes compressed garbage no matter how long or HD the video was, but that's more Apple's fault than MMS directly.
Imma be honest, half my communication involves emojis on discord. Jeb with his arms up is part of my personality now and I won't apologize. When I started seeing someone a few weeks ago I had to explain that he's missing out on half of my personality by texting. I substitute by jebbing in person but it's just not the same 😔
(and yes, Jeb has become a verb)
JEB!
because cellular providers are actually criminals.
Also sms (and mms, whatever the fuck else exists, it's all terrible, shits all packets flowing through the internet, it's the same shit) sucks, and is bad, and you shouldnt use it.