It’s no secret that, much like Marques Brownlee, I have two daily driver smartphones — a Google Pixel in my left pocket, and an iPhone in my right pocket. I have written about how much I’ve debated combining into the Google Pixel in the past. It is, in fact, a great source of debate among me and my friends! Some are annoyed I have been keeping iMessage turned off lately, others are surprised that I even have two phones in the first place.
To both of those, that’s incredibly valid! Here in the US, most people my age use iPhones, meaning nearly everyone I know has a blue bubble (minus a few.) And nobody wants to be without iMessage, let alone the one to break the group chat. Truth be told, I love both ecosystems and want to be in them. I have deep roots in the Apple world: I went to middle and high schools run by Questar III outside of my town, and they were iPad-based (back then, at least.)
Actually, to prove that iMessage usage is a common trend among my age group (18-24), I’ve actually asked my friends to pick what phone I should use. The results speak for themselves:
Between the two phones I own, everybody in my friend group (which has been together since 2019) said I should use my iPhone! As it relates to this, it makes clear that the social peer pressure of having iMessage is absolutely present among people my age. But that’s also the only thing that makes me want to keep the iPhone.
So, how do I keep iMessage whilst freeing myself from iPhone? Well, if I really wanted to, that could be accomplished with a handy little app called OpenBubbles. That requires a Mac computer with constant access to the internet, though, and is burdensome for most. Also, definitely insecure. If Beeper was still doing iMessage (even a local bridge), I might use that but that also poses a similar risk. Sigh.
I don’t know the answer, unfortunately. Maybe I’ll spin up OpenBubbles and sink time into Android as my primary driver. Perhaps I’ll keep running two phones simultaneously. I think I’ll need some help getting out of the iPhone ecosystem, but then again, there are some great apps on iOS — like Ivory and Reeder — which will be hard to live without.