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Comment by bithush | Hacker News Reader

I am amazed it is the end of 2014 and Google (and Microsoft) still have not figured out messaging yet. iMessage is far from perfect but it is a hell of a lot nicer experience than anything else.

This is even more true for Microsoft IMHO as they could (should!) have had an integrated messaging app between Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 to allow for transparent SMS/Skype/MSN/WhateverTheyWantToUseNow messaging the same way iMessage does and have everything synced between devices.

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Some people have suggested that this integration have been limited by the necessity to appease the carriers. I don't think that iMessage is perfect in any way (if anything the fact that it keeps hogging your messages when you switch from iOS to Android is a big issue) but yeah I also think that it is the way to go. Ideally, nobody should care about the specific protocol used to transport the message, you should just have a contact list and be able to let the app figure it out for you. There are still some contracts where SMS messages are not unlimited though and it sounds like a nightmare to make this kind of automatic fallback without taking the risk to drain your user account. Honestly, the SMS protocol should just die in a corner though. We just need to figure out how (maybe with something similar to WhatsApp ?)

Maybe the "messenger" app should be somehow like that Blackberry 10 OS "hub" for multiple messaging apps. I don't know. But other than that, I don't think SMS should be deeply integrated into any data-based chat application.

SMS is a legacy system that has no encryption (or very weak one if you count A5/1) and we should let it die. If people focus on data-based chat apps only such as Whatsapp, at least we have a chance to kill SMS and use better encryption for our chats. SMS is also very expensive for what it really costs.

SMS continues to be the lowest common denominator because a) not everyone has a smartphone but everyone has SMS, and b) SMS is standard across carriers. We need common carrier protocols for more than just voice and SMS, IMO.

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