Blue Bubbles vs Green Bubbles: Explained! 

ive heard the "android users get less dates" thing before. trust me guys, if they dont like you because of your phone choice, you dodged a bullet.

I love how Marques is actually aware of the international community and doesn’t just assume everyone is from America

The saddest part is that young people are being cuffed into this apple ecosystem. The same young generation who's supposed to be tech savvy and extremely adaptable to change.

Phone Racism

In Germany it is the opposite 😅 no one uses only iMessage. It's WhatsApp, Telegram and Wire/Threema/Signal for everything

As an android user in the US, I've actually grown to appreciate the green bubbles thing a little bit. Maybe I'm just a contrarian, but I think that if someone doesn't want to be your friend because of your phone choice, then you really don't want them as a friend anyways. At this point it's just a filter for shallow people

Two years from now and Google announcing they've done everything they can to make RCS compatible iMessage. This video aged surprisingly well. I live in the US and I never heard about this whole green vs blue bubble thing until an iPhone user in a group chat was complaining to me. I was like, I can make the color whatever I want to in the theme settings.

I consider the lack of read receipts and typing indicators to be a bonus. Nobody accuses me of leaving them on read, and I can't be expected to respond to texts instantly. HUGE benefit and I couldn't care less what color my bubbles are.

Important to note, iMessage doesn’t turn the android user’s bubble green. It turns the iPhone user’s bubble green. Like it’s punishing you for having a friend that doesn’t use apple products.

the amount of times I have been told to "just get an iphone" in response to my texts showing up green on their phones or limiting their group chat functionalities is astonishing. It's so refreshing to read these comments and see that this isn't a worldwide thing

I never really thought seriously about this until recently. I usually just use the default chat app. It was only until my younger sister told me she has an iphone because she felt pressured to do so. Seemed odd, but it was even stranger when i found out the pressures were tied to imessage and the green/blue bubbles. That her generation actually ostracizes anyone for being "green text". It was just so alien of a concept to me.

As someone with no friends, I see this as an absolute win.

As a middle school educator, I’ve heard quite a number of students make fun of kids that have an android phone because of the green bubble. They would say their phones are slow, ugly, or cheap. It really is a problem.

I just listened to 20 minutes about text messages, and never felt bored. Your video format and storytelling are top tier - Not to mention the production quality, which is off the charts!

Thank you for breaking this down so eloquently and articulately . As an elder millennial I was like ' wtf is even going on?!?' as if we don't already have enough legit conflicts, wars and battles going on in this world...

Imagine not using whatsapp

Wow, blows my mind as a non-American that this is an issue. Always interesting to hear about weird cultural aspect of countries though, even though this is a particularly crazy one! Thanks for the video Marques!

I'm from Switzerland. The iPhone is about as popular here as it is in the US but our default messaging app (for better and for worse) is in fact WhatsApp. That's the messaging app that everybody and your mom uses and that you kinda have to have, especially for group chats. While I absolutely detest the fact that a service from Meta has become the de facto standard in my country, I'm still glad that we don't have a problem with school bullying over the color of bubbles - at least as far as I know

Thank you. As someone from the Middle East and has seen different posts on Reddit regarding Android and iOS interactions, this video was very informative. You also pointed out a good observation which is that one company shouldn't have all the communication

The irony is- The iMessage app is in green colour 😂

One point that was missed was that Google didn't originally set out to make their own RCS servers. RCS was supposed to be run by the phone companies, just like SMS and MMS. But the phone companies didn't see any profit in it, and very few bothered to implement it. After a few years of no progress, Google decided to bypass the phone companies.

This is pretty interesting, how different cultures/countries/regions behave on that alone. In Europe, I don't think I know anyone using their default messaging app. Everyone is on WhatsApp, Telegram, or Signal (or all of them) The only messages I get over the default app are like parcel delivery updates lol

I will never date anyone who owns any apple products. They clearly have no idea how to spend money wisely.

I particularly enjoyed the 'iPhones have better cameras than Android' pitch from my iPhone owning friends who tried to convince me to convert when I was clinging on to my Blackberry. I took their advice, and bought a Sony Xperia.

I like how as soon as the RCS segment starts, the blue and green bubbles get removed from the background. That's a nice touch.

It completely blows my mind that someone would turn down a potential relationship based on the color of their message bubble. Discrimination has hit a new low.

I saw this and had to watch it to see how you could stretch this subject into a 20 minute video. Very informative, great job!

That's interesting. In my work space at least people tend to groan when someone brings an apple into group stuff because it always tends to cause so many problems with all the other varied systems we use.

The bubble thing is so weird to me as someone from Europe where literally everyone uses WhatsApp and it doesn't matter what phone you have. I think more people use Android here these days too.

Apple: "We solved a problem!" Also Apple: "That we created."

omg - you explained this so well! best i have seen so far. Wow - thanks!!

Your description of the messaging app wars reminded me of the IM wars of the late 90s/early 00s and how I just had to use Trillian to connect to all of them, because I couldn't get everyone on a single service.

Switched to Android about two years ago and all my friends immediately made fun of me for having a green bubble. It was in good fun but definitely got annoying around the sixth time

I just love how Apple convinced people to blame Android users for this when this is literally 100% Apple's fault for not allowing anyone else to use their applications

15:33 apple when they see something that isnt proprietary to them: 😮😮😮

I thought that in 2024 we'll discuss about flying cars, high tecnology and living in other planets, but we are discussing about green and blue bubles. LOL

I played lacrosse in college, and a few weeks into my first year my friend in the team asked me why I didn't go to a team event. I asked her what she was talking about and she said "you know the thing we all talked about in the group chat!" I said "what group chat?" That's when we both realized that I was the only one on the team not in this chat. I let the girl who made the group know that I wasn't in n it and she said she knew, she just didn't add me because she "didn't want green in the chat." That's when I realized how much I hate iPhones, solely for the exclusivity aspect and false sense of superiority it gives people.

This reminds me about a time in college when I went to a conference in Philly for a nonprofit organization I was involved in. The organizers set up a group chat over iMessage to give all the participants updates about the activities that would take place over 3 days. Out of over 20 participants from chapters all over the country, I was the only one with an Android phone. I missed out on a lot of the features in the chat and trying to text back was a nightmare. The person I got assigned as a roommate was kind enough to pass over some of the information that was being discussed, but I can't emphasize how dystopian and isolating it felt to be there with all these people while feeling like I was outside of a bubble. The insight in this video was real 😶

Thank you for this vidbJust got my 1st iPhone @ 32. I was very comfortable with my Samsung or Pixel phones but felt ostracized a lot more over the past few years.

It was the same "social pressure" when Blackberry had its message service with the PIN. People wanted a Blackberry to be "part of the wave" and to enjoy something that they seem to be missing (me included). It's normal, there are options out there and you have the freedom to try them.

A while back I was working remote with a project manager using an iphone. As an android user his group imessages were genuinely one of the best experiences I've ever had. Never receiving a proper invite was a wonderful excuse to miss zoom meeting.

I have an iPhone in the uk and the only reason I ever use iMessage is to play 8ball

It's really unfortunate that Signal dropped SMS/MMS support. I used them for years for both regular texting and secure internet messaging, but now had to resort to my default android messaging apps.

"Noooo, we're not monopoly, it's just convenience" *tearing soy jack face*

As an adult, when someone tells me to just get an iPhone because of them ugly green text bubbles, I just shrug and tell them, "not my problem." I am now realizing that this is a harder issue for younger people dealing with being bullied and excluded from conversations over something so trivial.

I love this video, didn’t realize this monstrosity was US specific. As a tech head I always thought this was ridiculous.

As someone who owns a very recent iPhone and prefers Android, this has been one of the reasons I haven’t wanted to switch, and I think it’s stupid. Luckily there’s tons of apps out there that can ‘fake’ iMessage on Android and make people think you have the blue bubbles, which is great

They are both amazing services. However, we need a third option. There should always be at least three or more options. I miss my old windows phone. A lot of people didn't like the platform, but I enjoyed it for what it was.

Very strange to see that SMS became even more popular in the US with the advent of the smartphone. In many other places, particularly the UK where I am from, third party messaging services made SMS practically obsolete for personal messaging, starting even before smartphones came along. This is because SMS messages were pretty expensive, could be around 15p per message.

genuinely fascinated about the green vs blue thing as a US android user who never even realized this was a thing. def encountered the groupchat issue but it's usually not hard to find an app everyone can use instead when that does come up

Just volunteered yesterday to try and sort out my family’s text situation and We’re 4 generations of folks spread out throughout the country and no one wants to switch to a GroupMe we made a while back. (You’re right about not wanting to switch/take extra steps.) 🤪There are multiple text threads due to member limit. I just want to get the same info to everyone ONCE!

This video is actually really interesting. I'm not from US, so I didn't know about this preference for the default apps and that would include iMessage. I live on Brazil, and the default messaging app over here is Whatsapp, with Telegram in second place. The reason for that is how iPhones are prohibitively expensive, even the cheapest ones. Not only that but a large amount of the population still prefer using smartphones which are over half a decade old by this point, sometimes more. If people aren't gonna use super high end features like better processing and graphics and the old phones still do the essentials, like messaging, entertainment and light gaming, there is no reason to swap. And I think this is bad, because it means Apple and other companies are being left out. Brazil is the seventh largest population in the world and the most popular phones here are the really old ones and Xiaomi devices. Samsung tries to get a cut but only A series have any chance. So yeah, iPhone is not very tempting over here, unless is only to have the brand on the back of the phone because there aren't any features the general public would prefer on iOS.

European here and you were totally right at the beginning of the video. Basically nobody uses the default message app here. We use a combination of Whatsapp, Facebook messenger, Discord and in rare cases Email/Gmail for all the messages we send. The fact that there are differences in the quality of the messages between the operating systems is absolutely insane to me. Also I've noticed that there is a separation in the use cases of each of these apps, for example older people mainly use messenger or whatsapp while younger people also use Discord.

As a non American (New Zealander) The iPhone surpremacy absolutely baffles me. Here a majority of the people I know avoid apple like the plague because they don't wanna pay out the ass when android has better value alternatives and an open ecosystem. If anyone were to care about the green blue bubble thing they are liable to be bullied, not the other way around. It's such a weird superficial thing that makes me even more confused about American culture

In India WhatsApp is kind of default.. Our default messaging apps are basically incoming like, OTP's , Bank messages and other stuffs. We don't generally text anyone on that

As a Spaniard, this video sounds INSANE. I am so glad apple isn't normalised here and people use stuff like telegram, whatsapp and discord instead

I have always been confused by it. Some people are weirdly intense about having blue vs green bubbles. It feels like one of those things that's just unnecessarily dividing.

as a person from a country where virtually everyone and their mom uses whatsapp, its difficult for me to comprehend the scale of the blue bubble - green bubble problem. from a consumer perspective, apple should add rcs support, but from their perspective, it seems like they're better off not adding it because it strengthens their "walled garden". awesome video as always marques :)

Always remember that the first generation iPhone that came out way back in 2007. Had SMS Messaging as the default texting app!

As someone who lives where the mobile operators made SMS and MMS ridiculously overpriced on all their plans, WhatsApp was a default before I even had a smartphone. So basically forever. No one in their right mind would risk a green bubble giving them an extra charge and Android is also much more common here as well

Last year, I had to send a screenshot to one of my friends living in the California USA, she immediately noticed it was taken from an android phone (given the status bar), and she was baffled by it. She asked me why i wasn't using an iPhone, I politely replied Android is much more customizable and buying and iPhone costs as much as buying a new car over here in india. Instead of understanding the economical imbalance and differences, she poor shamed me for using an Android phone and poked fun at me for about 15 minutes, She wasn't even a kid, a fully grown up working class woman And I've noticed this problem is only persistent in USA, none of my friends from any other developed countries gave 2 damns about me using an Android Phone

My perspective living in the US but being a millennial that grew up in Mexico. When talking about how predisposed people is to use the default apps on their phone, well not necessarily. This phenomenon of Whatsapp being used outside of the US was about timing. In Mexico WhatsApp was introduced before we had "unlimited texting" and of course before WhatsApp was acquired by Meta, so it was cheaper to send a WhatsApp vs a text, and because of this people learned to use the app. There was no predisposition because people wanted to save money, i don't know a single person in Mexico that doesn't know what WhatsApp is. People in the US just had and have more advantages that have allowed them to stay comfortable with their default option of texting.

Me - who exchanged iphone 13 for S23 Ultra, I don't give a sh*t about bubble colors and others opinion on me😂

Great explanation. Thanks!

I like how he gradually explains things. It’s easy for mind to understand. The whole point of RCS and messaging is clear to me now.

Thanks for explaining it so well Marques, I live in Australia and didn't even know this issue existed. Until I saw the waveform podcast and this video. Edit: Thanks for all the likes, y’all are awesome.

I (android) had a discussion with my mom (iPhone) about how phone contracts basically give out calls and texts for free these days and she said she found it weird that despite that we still use apps like what's app or telegram. I have lived literally the latter half of my life in the uk and not using WhatsApp/Snapchat seems so gar away... Weird even.

Thank you! Very informative 👏🏽. I

The irony of course is that the original iPhone wasn't even able to send MMS picture messages, while basically every other phone could.

We need someone to get on an interview with Craig and say “Apple has always been about security, why support the old and flawed SMS format when a far better and more secure alternative in RCS exists?”

I think for Apple to support RCS it can’t be run by google, for it to get support it’d likely need to be run by the carriers, likely as a joint venture, the carriers have leverage over Apple considering it’s where most of their phone sales go through and if it’s run by their partners rather than competitors it’d seem less like losing pace to the competitor. It’d likely end up being something similar to matter in Apple home, it has the main subset of features however there is certain features you just can’t get without the Apple way, for the HomeKit example there is adaptive lighting, HomeKit secure video, HomeKit secure router, etc.

In Europe young people mostly use primary Snapchat for send message and secondary WhatsApp. WhatsApp get more use by people over 25 or by young people to write with parents.

When I had an Android phone, people used to mock me when I would try to text a video to their iPhones. They'd make jokes about how terrible Android cameras were because the video on their end would look super grainy and awful as Marques showed in that example clip of his Tesla. I would try to stand up for myself and try to explain that the low-quality video had nothing to do with my phone and had everything to do with Apple's stubbornness around MMS and compression, but no one ever really listened. It's a sad truth for us American tech enthusiasts.

I love how many non-Americans watched this entire video. Reading the comments, I see WhatsApp has locked up the international texting. So green versus blue won’t apply to many. It’s not always the content, but sometimes just the person speaking we love. That’s why this channel has over 15 MILLION subs. Amazing. 👋👍

I’m from Mexico and I didn’t even knew about this issue, I talk with WhatsApp with everyone but i never imagined that in USA they use the message app, like here on Mexico it’s rare, so rare to see someone using the apple message app

1 year after this, Apple announces RCS in 2024, way to go !

As someone who lives outside the US, this cleared up so much for me. I always questioned why people in America didn't just use WhatsApp

I started using WhatsApp in 2011... after I got back from grad school in Europe. I was surprised that my fellow Americans hadn't really heard of it. Of course, having family overseas (India, Pakistan) made it convenient for me - made it so easy to keep in touch with those family members.

Great video, I've had my first iphone (13 MINI) for 18 months now. I still hate it and can't wait to get back in an Android. Probably getting a Samsung Flip5 any day now.

Yeah it is really hard to convince people to switch their messaging app. In Germany WhatsApp is more or less the default and it made a lot of headlines regarding data privacy and many newspapers have written about alternatives that are better like Signal and Telegram. After that many people actually installed these but quickly switched back to Whatsapp. Now I have 6 messaging apps on my phone to be able to reach everyone on their messenger of choice...

The way Marques explained this eloquently while taking a realistic approach to the scenario was absolutely commendable!

This videos has aged well, it's a win win 🏆

personally, green bubbles were among one reason that pushed me away from iPhone recently. I've been using iPhone for a while, though in general the sanboxyness of it is not something i like. Jailbreaking made it tolerable. In recent years, Apple has been cracking down on jailbreaking, and iOS 15 had no jailbreak for its entire lifespan prior to iOS 16, marking the first major version of iOS to do this. I got tired of being 2 major versions (soon 3) behind on software updates, not to mention that it is a significant security risk. The jailbreaking scene is also not as active as when i got into it, it feels like. The RU-vid app is really unstable when i have the tweaks to make it usable, and ReVanced looks really appealing. I also find it more annoying to compile my own apps for, which i don't do often, but it's hard since you can almost only do it with a Mac, and surprisingly i've wanted to do this several times in total. Recently, i got in a relationship, and my partner has an Android phone. I disliked the green bubbles for sure. And i've always wanted to try RCS. I don't believe this was "the straw that broke the camel's back", but it sure was another dry stick on the burning pile of Apple's bullshit. Apple having RCS probably wouldn't have prevented my switch, but i do think it would have delayed it. In any case, it would give me one less reason to switch. The only thing i regret so far is Signal message history being impossible to transfer to another device (except if i manage to unlock the iOS Keychain, which i couldn't figure out how to do, it seems hard) Sent from my Android with ReVanced.

Interesting that MMS blew up in the US. Here in Germany, it was a very expensive novelty that no one used.

7:50 - This is a real thing. In high school, I remember feeling left out of social groups, opportunities, etc. because I had an Android. Couldn’t be in group messages or FaceTime calls, and even Snapchat quality was worse. Years later none of this matters now, but it is interesting to see how the exclusivity of the Apple ecosystem affects adolescent relationships and social environments.

Another brilliant overview.

as an american i laugh also because its a phone 😂😂😂😂 but the things people complain about never gets old😊

Interestingly, the "default" messaging app in my country (the Netherlands) is WhatsApp. It's become such a norm that not having WhatsApp is like choosing to not have a messaging app on your phone. Edit: oh lol he just mentioned that this is the case in a lot of countries

Yeah. I switched from Apple to Android and have experienced the resulting blue bubble backlash first hand. Apples aversion to work with other brands has ensured that I will never be buying their products until something changes.

Most people use the default messaging app: What’s App: I’d like to introduce myself

Times like this im glad im a hermit that grew up before smartphones were a mandatory part of life

As a European, the chat habits in the US sound so weird to me. Here almost no one uses imessage anymore, whatsapp is the standard and the idea of being obliged to choose between a phone I like and being able to properly communicate with my friends drives me mad

ya the switching default thing is actually a super tough process!! as someone who's been using whatsapp since the beginning, the recent wave of switching to signal over the data privacy issue with WhatsApp was the perfect example where people just made accounts on there but not even half the people actually switched their "default" and just stuck to whatsapp.

I use the default apps on my phone because I don't care enough to switch. However, I do use Google Voice for a number that I created for work. I was around when SMS first came about. Yeah, I'm that old. Never bought into typing on a timy keyboard. Also, I don't expect people to have their phones close 24/7 so I'd rather call. One thing about texting in the good old days was that you could send a text in the wee hours of the night and expect a response the next day. That' was because people left their phones in the living room or front hall. Now if you send a text at night, you'll likely wake the person up because people can't be farther than three feet from their phone.

watching this today when Apple announces RCS support

I laughed very hard when he started to say, "well maybe an optimist would say Google could make a good competing messaging app..." knowing exactly where that was going.

As someone from South America (where the iPhone is really not dominant compared to Android), I find it insane that people can get harassed and turned down from stuff simply because of a message bubble. Here it's not even an issue because everyone uses Whatsapp, even the iPhone users, but still.

i think apps need to work with other apps. they can still be owned by separate companies but just need to work (well) with each other. if companies put actual effort into this i think it will work :) edit: we could have one texting standard but multiple apps that use it.

Whole situation is just aggravating. From Apple to Android and Android on the receiving end of Apple users bs

As a middle-aged mom who has only used Android phones, I appreciated this explainer. Although I feel zero social pressure regarding whether my texts to others are blue or green, I do appreciate things like read receipts (which I get from other Samsung users) and wish those kinds of features were cross-platform. I'll be keeping my eyes open now for more info on RCS messaging options.