Edit: NOTE, I am the receiver of the texts.
So many people asking me to have my wife do something different on her end.
Beloved, she is on iPhone because she doesn't want to do anything "weird." She is texting from her phone number using her texting app. That's what's going to happen.
Now, why can't I get iMessage on my android phone? If it's just a messenger app why not make it available for Android?
I'd use it.
Its due to compression of the video in order to fit on a MMS message, which is very small. Android uses RCS as a new message standard that can send bigger files but Apple has yet to add it to their OS. Its similar to how Apple uses iMessage to do the same, however this is not a standard and is locked to only apple devices.
Apple is supposedly adding support for RCS during the new iOS update but until then you can use a different messaging app to send better/larger files.
I recommend Signal as it is easy to sign up and start using while also being private.
The answer is as others have stated appl not supporting the open standard RCS.
I will elaborate with apple are deliberately dragging their feet supporting standards as a deliberate attempt to put social pressure on you to buy an iphone.
an audience member asked Apple CEO Tim Cook for some tech support. “I can’t send my mom certain videos,” he said; she used an Android device, which means she can't access Apple’s iMessage. Cook’s now-infamous response: “Buy your mom an iPhone.”
The Apple Antitrust Case and the ‘Stigma’ of the Green Bubble
The solutions others have suggested of installing other messaging apps like signal will work but I will suggest another; Buy your wife an Android.
THE solution is not to buy the wife an Android, that is ONE solution.
In total, there are a few solutions, I number them to make it easier to refer to them, not to order them from best to worst.
- Get yourself an iPhone
- Get your wife an Android
- Wait for iOS 18
- Switch to a messaging app like Element or Signal.
1 and 2: Unless you yourself can accept switching to using the other system, it is unfair to demand that the other part does that.
I have tried to switch to Android, I did it back in 2019, but I just disliked the feel of the OS enough that after dropping my phone and smashing the screen after 2-3 months, I didn't even bother to get it fixed, I just moved back to my iPhone.
- iOS 18 will have RCS, and will probably solve this.
"NO! YOU MUST FORCE EVERYONE IN YOUR VICINITY TO USE SIGNAL. USE SIGNAL. IF SOMEONE YOU KNOW DOESN'T USE SIGNAL, KILL THEM."
This entire thread.
Apple will support RCS in the next iOS 18, so maybe they can just wait a month.
The real reason: Apple intentionally doesn't support the open protocols that send pics and videos to non-Apple devices. These protocols are a decade old and work great. They use a proprietary protocol instead, which they will not share with other phone manufacturers.
What the average iPhone user thinks: Apple is better than Android!
It's pretty dumb.
Apple doesn't do RCS. This should be changing soon, but for now you should be using another messaging app, because everything you send is unencrypted and shittier quality
There's a solution nobody has mentioned yet, which is using an iMessage bridge application (allowing you to message iPhone users over iMessage). If you have a machine running MacOS, I just started using one called OpenBubbles that works great and, unlike other bridges (AirMessage or BlueBubbles), doesn't require you to spin up and run a Mac as a server.
Alternatively, iOS 18 drops this month and has support for RCS, as some have mentioned. This is assuming you use Google Messages...
One of you has a lower res screen so there is a conversion issue on the sending
What do the videos look like on her phone?
If they're shit there, it's the phone (or the operator). If they look good there and change to shit when they get to your phone, it's something in that process. Perhaps set to send a low res version by default.
It's fine, great on her phone. After sending to me it's unwatchable.
Use Whatsapp or another 3rd party messenger. It's annoying but an easy solution.
WhatsApp is the opposite of annoying, that's why the entire planet uses it, except U.S. Americans for some reason
they use proprietary file formats (MOV and HEIC) that need to be converted to a universal format like jpg or MP4 to be viewed on android (I think this can be changed in iPhone settings), and the conversion looks like shit
HEIC is not proprietary to Apple at all, they were just one of the early adopters of it.
My Android phone takes pictures in HEIC/HEIF by default, and it's not nearly as much of a problem anymore almost all software can handle the format now.
It’s very funny you say MOV and HEIC are proprietary and then list MP4 considering
- HEIC is just H.265, the video codec, used to encode images
- H.264, the codec used for most mp4 files has the same license as H.265 with patent bullshit license fees going on
- MP4 container is pretty similar to MOV, and is also not an open standard
- this also means MOV and MP4 can be losslessly converted
- Apple provides documentation for MOV format free of charge while ISO really wants you to pay to get official standard PDF
- All this doesn’t matter anyway because ffmpeg can decode everything (though I guess it might matter in bizarro land where software patents are a thing)
Also Android can totally read at least HEIC images. Not sure about MOV. Any of this is also not related to the problem the OP has.
