When I shifted to the iPhone from a Samsung Galaxy S II, one of the things I liked instantly was its iMessage service. As a matter of fact, much of communication between the people working at Redmond Pie takes place through iMessage. We like it for its instantaneousness and security.
Announced as part of iOS 5 back in June 2011 at last year’s Worldwide Developers Conference, iMessage has become one of the most popular ways of instant mobile messaging. It works over Wi-Fi or cellular data and allows iPhone, iPod touch, iPad and Mac users to send each other text messages photos, videos, contacts for free.
Now, iMessage does one problem I’ve noticed over the past few months, and it’s a big problem considering what type of user you are: if the recipient is a registered iMessage user but is not connected to Wi-Fi or have cellular data activated then your iMessage will remain stuck in limbo for extended periods of time before your iOS device decides to send it out as a text message. This has been a source of miscommunication for many (including me) and, luckily, we’ve come across a workaround for it, and it’s a very genius method which we never knew existed before.
The handy tip comes from gunarpants over on Reddit and here’s how it works: if you send out an iMessage but it does not show “Delivered” under blue ellipse, you can double tap or tap and hold the message until you see an option that says Send as Text Message. Tapping that will send out the same message through your wireless network. How simple was that?
This doesn’t work during the time when you see a Sending message in the navigation bar, so if you have questionable cellular data coverage you’ll have to wait for a bit.
I personally never knew I could manually send a text message (save for turning off Wi-Fi and cellular data) so this tip is pretty useful for me. And to be quite honest, it’s a very, very handy technique to send out a message to a concerned recipient if you have something important pending on your list. I hope you find it useful as well.
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