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Comment by dkdbejwi383 | Hacker News Reader

Is green bubble iMessage or SMS?

iMessage is barely used in the UK, WhatsApp is the default messaging platform here

I'm in the UK pretty much only use iMessage/Snapchat.

I had a look at the stats though and you're probably correct about WhatsApp being default, although we do have a surprisingly diverse and competitive messenger market:

https://www.statista.com/forecasts/997945/most-used-messenge...

Id be very interested to break that data down by age. I'd hypothesise people who grew up during the dawn of social media (late 00s, early 2010s), will be strongly aligned with whatsapp whereas younger generations might be more iMessage/snapchat whatever else is out there these days. The most interesting generation would be gen X'ers. I guess theyll be a jumble of all solutions, including SMS

Yeah it would be fascinating.

I also suspect international social structures could play a big role. In the UK many people have friends & family that emigrated to iMessage counties like the US & Australia. But many have links to WhatsApp countries like India or even Telegram countries in Eastern Europe.

Green bubble is messages you sent via SMS (and so may have been charged by your carrier depending on your cellular plan)

Blue bubble is messages you sent via iMessage.

All incoming messages are grey, regardless of whether they were sent to you via SMS or iMessage.

> and so may have been charged by your carrier depending on your cellular plan

I don't know of any UK plan that charges.

Must be a couple of decades since I was last charged for SMS

PAYG plans do.

Don't they almost all work on a "goodybag" model now where you top-up £x for the next month of tens of GB of data, hundreds or unlimited minutes, and unlimited texts? Using "real" balance is uncommon in my experience

Only if one buys such a "goodybag".

My father doesn't and so pays PAYG rates when he uses his. Which probably makes sense for him, given his infrequent use pattern.

Try sending an image on green.

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