The roaming problem with iMessage

Zë Au Sol -

UPDATE

It appears I might have been too hard a judge: having just sent an iMessage, iPhone was unable to deliver it for a few minutes, then automatically sent it as SMS. Clearly this doesn’t work all the time, which is a shame.

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The scenario: you’re using iMessage to communicate with someone in the 
morning, then they travel to another country. You reply to a message 
they’ve sent; not specifying to send a message using SMS or iMessage, 
only to realise they’re not going get it until they re-connect to 
data.

I do not believe there’s way to tell iOS to send using SMS, and it, 
rather irritatingly, only checks for your data status, and not at 
least the roaming status of your conversation recipient. Not without 
disabling iMessage, switching back to the messaging application, and 
then re-enabling iMessage when done.

Not the best implementation of SIP.