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Android Messages Beta Starts Properly Displaying iOS Message Reactions (theverge.com) 91

Posted by msmash from the moving-forward dept.
Google is widely rolling out a new Google Messages feature to beta users that allows the Android messaging app to correctly interpret emoji reactions sent from the iOS Messages app, 9to5Google reports. From a report: The feature appears to be live in version 20220121_02_RC00 of the app, according to Droid-Life, but not for every user. Although it didn't work on every phone we tried, we were able to get it working on an Oppo Find X3 Pro, which is more than can be said for when the feature initially started appearing last November. The feature fixes a long-standing issue that can affect SMS chats between iPhone and Android users. When an iPhone user reacts to an Android message with emoji, the Android user typically sees this reaction sent as an entirely separate text message, resulting in confusion and lots of unnecessary clutter.
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Android Messages Beta Starts Properly Displaying iOS Message Reactions More

Android Messages Beta Starts Properly Displaying iOS Message Reactions

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  • race to the bottom (Score:5, Interesting)

    by fred6666 ( 4718031 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2022 @10:57AM (#62226817)

    iOS should not be sending message reactions over SMS if it's not part of the SMS standard. At least, they should have partnered with Google to create a semi-standard before implementing this.

    • Re:race to the bottom (Score:5, Funny)

      by drafalski ( 232178 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2022 @11:11AM (#62226853)

      drafalski liked "iOS should not be sending message reactions over SMS if it's not part of the SMS standard. At least, they should have partnered with Google to create a semi-standard before implementing this."

      • TheScarryKitty double liked "drafalski liked "iOS should not be sending message reactions over SMS if it's not part of the SMS standard. At least, they should have partnered with Google to create a semi-standard before implementing this.""
      • UnknowingFool disliked "drafalski liked "iOS should not be sending message reactions over SMS if it's not part of the SMS standard. At least, they should have partnered with Google to create a semi-standard before implementing this.""

    • Re:race to the bottom (Score:5, Informative)

      by _xeno_ ( 155264 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2022 @11:59AM (#62226977) Homepage Journal

      There is an open standard for doing this. It's called RCS. Apple refuses to implement it.

      The hilarious thing is that, AFAIK, Apple doesn't even support their own reactions over SMS/MMS. That is, if for whatever reason someone uses a "special" iMessage feature to another iMessage user but it ends up getting sent over "legacy" SMS, it'll show up as just text. (This is easy to do with MMS, if there are Android recipients in a group text, none of the "special" iMessage features work in the group and instead show up as text for other iMessage users. Sending SMS when both users are on iMessage is somewhat harder since it involves a scenario where the phone has cellular access but not Internet access.)

      • The hilarious thing is that, AFAIK, Apple doesn't even support their own reactions over SMS/MMS

        Apple wants to support a narrative where this is too hard to implement or that Android users don't deserve to participate. Same reason they don't like RCS.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      It's time for SMS to die entirely. Problem is, there is no good alternative. RCS is okay, but relies on phone numbers as identifiers.

      • There is email, xmpp. With some will, something else (better) could be developed pretty quickly.
        The problem is that corporations like Apple prefer vendor lock-in.

        • Well, the real problem isn't "corporations like Apple", it's just "Apple".

          They won't let any other app handle SMS messaging on iOS, and they won't add RCS to iMessage. And then they won't make an iMessage app for Android, which they could do in about 10 days if they wanted to. Even if they charged for it, they would make money on it; and it would be the best SMS handler on Android overnight.

          They are purposefully causing pain by being assholes.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by bn-7bc ( 909819 )
            They will need to integrate the form of rcs the cariers agree on, as sns will guilty die as 2g networks get turned off. The age of sns is coming to an end

      • Wouldn't it be better if "message reactions" died entirely? There is literally no valid use case there. It's like people can't be bothered to remember they're not on Facebook.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by GoTeam ( 5042081 )
          I only use them in messages replies to folks I don't want sending me future messages

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          Either you have message reactions, or you hand comments like "me too". You can't stop people doing it.

          At least with reactions they don't clutter up the conversation too much.

          • At least with reactions they don't clutter up the conversation too much.

            Well, now. They were nothing BUT clutter if there was an Android phone involved, especially in group messaging:

            person1: blah blah blah very long message blah blah this and that blah blah blah
            person2: person2 liked "blah blah blah very long message blah blah this and that blah blah blah"
            person3: person3 liked "blah blah blah very long message blah blah this and that blah blah blah"
            person4: person4 liked "blah blah blah very long message blah blah this and that blah blah blah"
            person3: person3 liked "person4

      • There is no other reasonable identifier if you want a universal standard. Phone numbers have two things going for them - they aren't tied to any one corporate entity and they have a somewhat artificial scarcity to reduce spam.

        If all you want is chat, you can pick whatever vendor you want. You just have no way of getting everyone in the world (or even in the same country) to be in the same ecosystem. So then you have to deal with the avalanche of Teams, Slack, Google Chat, Whatsapp, Messenger, Telegram, S

        • There is no other reasonable identifier if you want a universal standard. Phone numbers have two things going for them - they aren't tied to any one corporate entity

          They are. They belong to a phone provider. Plus, you can't move them from one country to another. They are the worst ID I could think of, even an IP address would be better.

          and they have a somewhat artificial scarcity to reduce spam.

          Not really, plus I get tons of auto dealership spam robo calls. My email spam are handled much better.

          RCS should have a way to use the phone number identifier off-network on a PC or tablet, though. The problem is that this would be implemented at the carrier level and so they would probably be the ones developing the app unless they were to extend RCS to hook/relay into a third party.

          RCS is total crap because just like SMS, it depends on mobile phone carriers. It allows mobile phone carriers to easily see who you sent messages to, and bill you per message.

          • I can move my phone number between providers. An IP address would be...fun? We're a long way from IPv6 being anywhere common. And multiple endpoint devices would all have their own address. Not even cell providers are dealing with IPv6 - they are jumping to Carrier-Grade NAT and just ignoring IPv6. IP+Port would be your cell phone's unique identifier and it would change over time.

            The thing is, it's the difference between an open standard and a vendor-locked platform. Being semi-locked by country but s

            • P.S. IP Addresses are handled by ARIN and are directly tied to your carrier or ISP. Unless you own your own delegated address space.

            • SMS might not be single vendor but it's locked to the mobile phone operator cartel, or should I say mafia?

              Whatsapp also suck because it rely on phone number as the ID.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

            They are. They belong to a phone provider. Plus, you can't move them from one country to another. They are the worst ID I could think of, even an IP address would be better.

            You can move phone numbers across countries. After all, everyone knows the robocalls currently plaguing the world all originate from India, yet have North American phone numbers. And last I checked, India isn't in North America.

            The way is, of course, VoIP which allows a phone provider to forward a phone number from one physical location

            • Like it or not, 99% of people change mobile phone number if they move to another country. Roaming forever is expensive, although there might be some regional exceptions (EU?)

              And while you can use a VoIP phone number anywhere, again, regular people want a local number so that their friends can call them without having to pay exorbitant fees. An expat might keep his old number and get a new one in the new country.

        • One other problem with phone numbers is that they are not linked to a person. Some have a couple different phone numbers, and others share a single number between many people.
          for that reason alone, email is a much better ID.

          • Some have a couple different email addresses, and others share a single email address between many people.

            • Well unless you still live in 1990, families don't share a common email address anymore.
              If you have a couple different email addresses, it's because they serve different purposes (such as personal/corporate). My different phone numbers are landline and mobile. Which one should you use to contact me? It depends.

              • I literally still see people sharing a Facebook account. And yes, email too. Some of them millennials. I'm not saying I understand.

                • Well it's their problem but there is no reason why they couldn't each have their own. Unlike a phone number, which you usually have to pay a significant amount of money each month for.

                  • I pay about $1/mo per DID. If those numbers were cell phones on a voice/text prepay account it would be a few dollars more - maybe $5-6 each?

                    • Well even for $1/month, I'm not getting a dedicated phone number for each member of my family. Anyways they would all ring the same phones.
                      I'm not getting my kids cell phone numbers either. Maybe when they are older...
                      And I don't even myself have an SMS plan. I have to pay per message. I'm not using it.

                    • Businesses generally don't get my cell number. For VoIP, I prefix the caller ID name with an initial and colon to show who the call is for. I guess my goal in life is to answer as few phone calls as possible.

    • iOS should not be sending message reactions over SMS if it's not part of the SMS standard.

      I really cannot comprehend this response, nor the statement in the story summary that people are getting "confused".

      What is so hard to understand about a thumbs up sent as a separate message, vs being slightly raised and attached to message you are responding to?

      Hell I do this most of the time anyway, someone sends a message saying they are going to do something and I just send a thumbs up emoji instead of a "reaction

      • Because it doesn't just show up as an emoji on non-Apple devices. It quotes the whole fucking message and prepends $NAME liked "$MSG". And in groups, multiple "likes" means multiple copies of the same message. It's fucking shit.

        • It quotes the whole fucking message and prepends $NAME liked "$MSG".

          Thanks, didn't realize it was doing all that, would have been nice to see a bit more description around the problem in the summary.

          Luckily for Android users I know, I pretty much only ever just send emojis instead of reactions...

      • exactly, a separate message would be fine. But what Apple is sending is total crap. It is sending the same message again, along with the reaction such as "like". It's idiotic.

    • iOS should not be sending message reactions over SMS if it's not part of the SMS standard. At least, they should have partnered with Google to create a semi-standard before implementing this.

      The whole point of the SMS spam is to annoy Android users, and to make messaging on iPhones look better in comparison. There was never any incentive for them to partner with Google -- if anything, there's incentive now for Apple to change the format of those messages so that Android messaging apps won't be able to interpret them again.

      • The users sending these spams, just like "sent from my iPhone" advertisements at the end of every email, should be ashamed. Not just Apple themselves.
        The user has a responsibility not to spam. If your phone is configured to spam your recipients and you don't know how to turn it off, then you should change your phone.

    • Yeah, because Apple is in the business of partnering on anything to do with iMessage or FaceTime.

  • I don't want that either (Score:3, Informative)

    by Outta_the_way_peck! ( 1742374 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2022 @11:29AM (#62226909)
    I would much rather be able to block that crap all together. I don't that someone reacted to a message. Honestly the only group chat that I get this stuff from is one that I block notifications on anyways.
    • Reactions are just emojis that iMessage groups differently than other messages. If you do not want reactions you'll have to use a really old phone that does not support Unicode in SMS. Good luck with that.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by _xeno_ ( 155264 )

        No they aren't. iMessage reactions, when sent to an Android phone, show up in the form of "[user] [reaction] [entire text of message]" where [reaction] is one of the six available iMessage reactions. The only two I know are "loved" (which iOS displays as a heart) and "liked" (which is a thumbs up). There's also a "thumbs down" to pair with the "thumbs up," an exclamation point, a question mark, and a small "ha ha." (Literally the text "ha ha," not a laughing face or anything.) I don't know how those show up

        • That's annoying but what's worse is when an iphone user likes a picture. If you sent multiple, you have no idea which one they are liking [user][reaction]"likes an image"

        • No they aren't. iMessage reactions, when sent to an Android phone, show up in the form of "[user] [reaction] [entire text of message]" where [reaction] is one of the six available iMessage reactions. The only two I know are "loved" (which iOS displays as a heart) and "liked" (which is a thumbs up). There's also a "thumbs down" to pair with the "thumbs up," an exclamation point, a question mark, and a small "ha ha." (Literally the text "ha ha," not a laughing face or anything.) I don't know how those show up in Android.

          Android just treats each of these as separate texts. Apple groups them.

          In any case, they're not emojis. They end up being incredibly long messages because they quote the entire message being reacted to.

          Please consult Unicode tables

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by _xeno_ ( 155264 )

            Notice how you didn't find a "ha ha" emoji? That's because they're not emojis. They're special iMessage things. You can map them to emojis (that's how Google handles this) but they're not emojis.

            Android just treats each of these as separate texts. Apple groups them.

            Wrong. When an iMessage user "reacts" to a message to another iMessage user, they send a "special" message that indicates which of the six reactions they're using and what message they're reacting to. If it gets sent over SMS, it instead gets converted to text.

            So, for example, if an Android user sent "Reactions are

            • Notice how you didn't find a "ha ha" emoji? That's because they're not emojis. They're special iMessage things. You can map them to emojis (that's how Google handles this) but they're not emojis.

              Notice how you promptly ignored that I demonstrated 4 of the 5 icons that you said were "not emojis" were in fact emojis. It is like you are selectively choosing to ignore evidence. If I were to guess "HaHa" is a repurposed "Tears with Joy" emoji Unicode 0X00001F602

              Wrong. When an iMessage user "reacts" to a message to another iMessage user, they send a "special" message that indicates which of the six reactions they're using and what message they're reacting to. If it gets sent over SMS, it instead gets converted to text.

              Geez man. You stated exactly what I stated but labeled my statement as "wrong".

              Worse, I'm fairly sure the text representations are locallized based on the sending iPhone.

              What? You do know the purpose of Unicode was to support multiple localizations and languages simultaneously in one character set, right? If I send simplified Chinese o

              • You're right that how they're represented on iPhone is Unicode emoji. But when they are sent out as fallback SMS, it is literally the words like "liked" and then a quote of the message. Android has to interpret the locale of the word "liked" in every supported language depending on the sender and then find the linked message by looking for a sent message with the same quoted words. SMS can't contain metadata with a message ID of where to attach that emoji which is why Apple sends the quoted text back fo

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by _xeno_ ( 155264 )

                  You're right that how they're represented on iPhone is Unicode emoji.

                  No, he's not, unless his argument is literally every little picture is "an emoji" and even then he's not because "ha ha" literally is not a Unicode emoji. Apple actually calls these things "tapbacks" so you can see what they look like on the support article for tapbacks [apple.com]. They're special iMessage specific icons that are used in iMessage and iMessage alone. (Also shown in the generic support article for iMessage features [apple.com] if you want to see how they look on iOS. Note that the "tapback" is the thing above the e

          • That's because they are sent as separate texts, which iMessage parses and hides in order to put the emoji badge over the thing that was reacted to.

            Strangely, that's exactly what Google implemented in Messages.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by King_TJ ( 85913 )

      Thing is? Some "reactions" can be pretty handy. I particularly like the "thumbs up" emoji even in MS Teams corporate chats, because quite often, you just need to convey acknowledgement and approval of a comment. It saves typing, responding "Sounds good!" or "Confirmed!" or whatever else you might otherwise reply.

      I like having options so sure, I wouldn't mind if phones let you toggle something to filter all of them out. But I'm just saying, they can be a valid form of communications and I'm not sure I'd wa

  • what poor people experience on their PoorPhones

  • I don't bother replying to SMSes that don't contain plain ASCII, because I know whoever sent it isn't someone I want to interact with.

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