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Comment by j7ake | Hacker News Reader

For a small group messaging each other, at what point is simple SMS superior?

Once SMS itself becomes a more modern way of communicating. Currently every 160 (IIRC) characters costs, sending images (and god forbid videos) is barely worth it, not to mention the lack of security. Comparing to food, I would say this is as good as saying “Why not just buy a bag of chips instead of cooking a meal”

Most people don't actually use SMS though, despite thinking that they use SMS. My mom still thinks she uses SMS, despite it just being iMessage in the end. Messages can be long, video, images etc are easy and we have about 4-5 different group conversations going at any given time in my family.

"Most people" do not own an iPhone or use iMessages, maybe in your bubble, but not in the real world.

My family does... also, like 9 out of 10 teenagers in some places like the US, do.

The people that don't use iMessage probably use RCS, not SMS.

Yes, which was rolled out recently, and when these talk to each other it falls back to SMS, there's Messenger/WhatsApp/or whatever people are using today.

That's not the point I'm disagreeing with though, it's just a reminder that the claim that "most people" own an iPhone is delusional. It's just as ridiculous as someone only hanging out with billionaires claiming "most people fly private jets", and it can be healthy to consider the rest of the world from time to time.

I live in Europe and while iPhones aren't uncommon they don't have the status they (seem to) have in the US and most people use Android.

I can see two main objections:

1. SMS do not support group messaging. An SMS with multiple receivers is just multiple copies of a 1-to-1 message. The other recipients don't know about each other.

2. SMS do not support images or videos.

Maybe you're talking about MMS, but I've always found that clunky. I'm not sure why. Part of it is that it goes over a seldomly-used separate type of connection (at least with 3G and earlier technology) which isn't as reliable as plain TCP.

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