A few days ago, I wrote that my carrier was making me feel like leaving iPhone. Well, the cracks are beginning to show and I’m very much starting to tire of this. Look, I’ve been an iPhone user since high school. I am of the age where I feel the peer pressure of having iMessage for the group chats, while also needing RCS to interact with those few who don’t. But now I’m about to become one of those few who don’t again. I’m starting to wonder if I should get rid of my iPhone altogether… and it all comes down to my experience on the iPhone in the past few weeks…
Act 1: RCS
I’ve said many times that I need RCS—I have friends and family who do not have iMessage, and I send photos back and forth between coasts here in the States. That has not changed, and I maintain I need the feature in order to continue using an iPhone.
As many of you know, I’ve been on this journey of getting RCS to work on my iPhone 13 Pro Max for a few weeks. It was working before—now it’s not. That’s not good! What should have been a quick 10 minute process has turned into two full weeks of back-and-forths with my carrier. While I appreciate everything they’re doing, it really has begun to feel as though I will not see a resolution any time soon. Why? Because two weeks in, and we’re still doing the same damn troubleshooting steps over and over again. And nothing changes.
We’ve downgraded and upgraded my plan. We’ve reset my network settings. I’ve even gone as far as to factory reset my iPhone and not restore from an iCloud backup just to make sure nothing goes wrong there. It’s ridiculous the amount of work we’ve put into it. My carrier’s executive office has gone as far as to start working with Google Jibe (Google maintains the RCS infrastructure for some carriers through the Jibe Cloud platform) to see what’s going on there, and even they aren’t getting anywhere working with them directly. It has been two weeks! That’s concerning!
But I think the most egregious part about this is Apple’s involvement. Sure, I could just turn RCS off entirely and forget the whole thing. That’s an option. But then I’m missing out on using an advertised feature of iOS 18 that makes the texting experience between green bubbles so much nicer to deal with!
Apple should have handled the infrastructure in-house like Google did. And frankly, Apple evangelists, power users, and even normal users should be rioting in the streets over that. It’s super dumb that they left it to carriers who clearly have no idea what they’re doing (see my experience dealing with my carrier’s executive team) and just hand that off to Google anyway.
Act 2: The Urge to Switch
So while I’ve wasted two weeks of my life waiting, twiddling my thumbs and hoping everything will just “work” tomorrow, I’ve gotten to thinking… what if I switched? Because the day that everything works hasn’t come and I’m not convinced it’s even close to coming. I’ve been staring longingly at the Google Pixel I keep on my desk for app development and testing. It has felt as though it is begging for my SIM card. And you must know that I’ve had temptation.
But there are issues that ruin Android for me, specifically apps and my smartwatch. A few examples:
- I’ve made most of my purchases on Apple’s App Store, I use Ivory for Mastodon (a fantastic app) which doesn’t have a great alternative on Android. I don’t like Tusky or the stock Mastodon app, to be honest.
- Snapchat on Android is still kind of a mess, even on Google Pixel despite being touted as a partner—it’s not as good as they say, trust me.
- My smartwatch? I only have an Apple Watch—and I do use it frequently, with that data being incredibly useful for talking with my doctor about my health issues. This would basically be a paperweight after the switch.
And by switching, I give all of that up in favor of Google’s take on what a phone should be. I switch to a device where I do control the experience with the beautiful Material You UI, but lose the apps I’ve become accustomed to, plus the group chats and international friends I have. All for RCS, the future of messaging? That’s hardly ideal… but I’m thinking it might be necessary.
Act 3: Finale…?
Honestly, I wish I had a better conclusion for you here today. I suppose there is a chance I could make the leap over to enlist in the green robot army. It’s something I need to think about. Especially if this issue with RCS “waiting on activation” with my carrier isn’t resolved or at minimum meaningfully progressing by the morning tomorrow. Because let it be known, I’m that done. Two weeks with no progress…I can’t not have the feature, y’all.
Who knows, maybe they’ll do something after I post this? We’ll see!