What phone platform is both open and lets you communicate over iMessage without absurd workarounds?
To get a blue bubble you must give up control over your mobile life to Apple.
To get a blue bubble you must give up control over your mobile life to Apple.
As someone who has never used Apple products (well, except for the OS on an Apple II I built from a kit as a high school project in 1983), I don't understand why a "blue bubble" is important.
Would you mind explaining that to me? Not being snarky here, I just really don't understand what value there is in a "blue bubble."
Not as much as you probably believe it is (at least in the US), given it has the majority smartphone owneship share here.
...and if you "want the blue bubble" you must give up control over your messaging to Apple.
Even the low end carriers like Metro give you a “free” iPhone with a contract. Even if that’s not the case, the price of a iPhone SE over two years is not that much higher than an Android.
That’s not even bringing up the refurb market.
It is both awkward (for instance, using a reaction generates a "so and so liked your thing" message) and insecure (now every word in a chat gets blasted out over the known-insecure medium).
And as for group chats, you should understand that if you start one on iMessage, you shouldn't be surprised that it doesn't work cross-platform. It could, but Apple deliberately doesn't want to make an iMessage app for Android.
Understand the implications of using a proprietary system.