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Comment by cubefox | Hacker News Reader

> It doesn’t matter if both support 100% identical feature sets, it’s gonna stay like that.

That's completely irrelevant. The problem was (obviously!) always about the incompatibilities rather than the color.

Not to Google. Green bubbles were a big social shaming issue affecting the sale of Android. This is all in the US only afaik. So in other countries with a similar iPhone market share there isn’t a green bubble social stigma.

That's false. The color green is irrelevant. If the Apple bubbles had been green, and the Android bubbles had been blue, still the Android bubbles would have been shamed. It was never about the color. It was because of the SMS/iMessage feature incompatibilities.

Let me spell it out: the arbitrary color lets you identify the ones who use Android. Some people think the reason for using Android is being poor. Others don’t want to be seen as poor, because social posturing is important to them.

> Others don’t want to be seen as poor, because social posturing is important to them.

Then they should buy an iPhone if social posturing is important to them.

In all seriousness now: the green buble shows you that you’re sending SMSes which, based on carrier and/or country it can cost you, especially if you’re roaming overseeas where every SMS is 10/20/50c each.

I don't think it has to do with poverty. There are Android phones that are as expensive as iPhones. It was just because of incompatibility.

iPhone users perceive Android devices as poor. It’s naive and biased, but there’s at least some validity based on the fact that Android devices can cost anywhere from $100 for some basic model at Walmart to ~$2k for the bendy/foldies.

What most are saying is that there’s always been the perception that comes with green messages. When I was on Android (pretty much since the first Nexus all the way to the Galaxy Fold 4), I definitely noticed iPhone users avoiding SMSing with me or in groups, and instead using Facebook Messenger because of the issues that come with group texts involving non-iOS users.

Now that I’m on iOS, I’m aware of the differences, although I don’t particularly care since so many Android devices support RCS.

Social posturing is important to everyone. You probably just socially posture differently.

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