Released as part of iOS 5 in October 2011, iMessage is Apple’s answer to services such as BlackBerry Messenger and all of the various other data-based free messaging services that have been popping up recently. As an enhancement to SMS/MMS messaging, it seamlessly kicks in when you send a message to one of your iMessage enabled friends, instead sending your message over 3G or Wi-Fi, therefore bypassing your carrier’s messaging plan! At least that is the theory…
After using iMessage for a few weeks, it seems like a single fundamental change to its implementation could help improve this vision of seamlessness. The problem is that for messages to get through to your device, the network that you’re on requires certain ports to be open for use. So as you’re roaming around, latching onto various Wi-Fi networks you may find that in some locations iMessage doesn’t actually work and when on a capable device, a fall-back SMS message is sent instead.
So here’s a hypothetical scenario. A user has an iPhone with Wi-Fi access at work which they can quite happily use for browsing the web, but due to the restrictive set up (for obvious security reasons), not much more actually works on the network. So when one of their contacts tries sending them an iMessage, it will fail to go through. However if they turn off the Wi-Fi on their phone, the iMessage will go through just fine and dandy over the mobile network.
One has to ask this simple question. When joining a Wi-Fi network, would it really be that hard for an iOS device to query the possibility of iMessage working? When in a situation where the service won’t be able work, at this point it should surely continue to use the mobile network for iMessage functionality, whilst still allowing the use of the Wi-Fi connection for other permitted tasks. This seems like relatively simple logic considering the amount of secured networks that exist today.
On top of this issue, there is another problem that I have with iMessage’s implementation. And to read about that, you’ll have to wait for part 2!
