Hacker News Reader

Comment by somenameforme | Hacker News Reader

Why would you or any customer want to receive SMS instead of email when most/all phones, even brick phones now a days, have internet? SMS, to me, feels like a way less secure, less functional, less portable, and more expensive email. It made sense back before basically every plan had a high/no limit internet plan, but now..?

The only real positive, so far as I can see, is the 'instantaneous' send/receive, but again thanks to big plans now a days your email checking every 5 seconds or whatever is basically free, making that benefit more of a technicality than reality.

View on HN

> SMS, to me, feels like a way less secure, less functional, less portable, and more expensive email.

You can't port email addresses unless you own the domain. For the majority of people SMS is the more portable option because they can freely port their phone number to a different carrier.

"portability" probably refers to being able to access messages from multiple devices, which can be easily done on email but not text messages. People port their phone numbers to get a better plan, but that's rarely done for email. At best there's a handful of privacy conscious people switching gmail for protonmail or whatever.

Everyone just uses Gmail/Hotmail/iCloud/Proton which just don't have the port problem as carriers because you don't have any reason to port since there's no fees and no physical network, you can just accrue more and use mail forwarding with no problem.

that's another cost, have fun getting your emails dropped by microsoft because they don't like your ip addresses unless you pay someone else to send for you

I can always access my email if I have a computer and internet. I cannot access my SMS without my phone. Which, with the sudden battery swelling...

FWIW, this is why I always travel with a spare phone, especially if out of the country.

I've had my laptops battery swell more than any phone

Because to check email your active participation is needed so you must start an application while to accept texting no such action is needed. Thus for short information (read-and-forget) short messaging (SMS or RCS) is more convenient. Of course, you could use a specialized application to check your email account and filter those needing immediate notification, but if such a service is already available what is the reason to generate additional much bigger traffic?

I don't understand where you're coming from here. Both Android and iPhone automatically and passively check emails simulating real time connectivity akin to a messenger. What you said does apply to desktop, but comparing SMS to desktop email is rather odd to say the least.

> Why would you or any customer want to receive SMS instead of email

Because doing me doing tech support over SMS often flows much better than email.

That's one reason but there are a lot.

SMS is lightweight and crazy reliable. You can count on getting text messages when Internet is unavailable.

iOS doesn’t support email encryption. My provider(mailbox.org) offers an option to automatically encrypt all incoming email.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com