The Infamous Blue Bubble

You’ve probably heard about the “controversy” behind the blue and green speech bubbles when you text. If you’re texting with someone and a blue bubble shows up, it means they also have an iPhone, whereas if they have a green bubble, it means they have an Android device or other type of cell phone.

While the color of your bubble doesn’t — or at least shouldn’t — matter, there are some benefits to chatting with other iPhone users.

All iPhone users chat via iMessage, which gives them some benefits compared to talking to Android users. For instance, sending pictures, creating group chats, and even scheduling text messages when chatting with an iPhone user via iMessage is easier.

That said, iOS 18 has changed things a bit, thanks to support for Rich Communication Services (RCS). RCS is still carrier-based, so you’ll only have it if your carrier offers it, but if so, you’ll see some improvements when chatting with Android users (as long as they also support RCS). For instance, you can see if they’ve seen your message or if they’re replying, and you can send higher-quality pictures or videos.

However, there aren’t as many features as with iMessage, which makes chatting with other iPhone users a bit more convenient, at least with the Messages app. Plus, unlike iMessage, you won’t benefit from end-to-end encryption (E2EE); Google Messages offers RCS between Android phones, but only if they’re both using Google’s messaging app, as that’s a proprietary feature Google cooked up, and not part of the universal RCS standard.