I really miss support for iMessage style reactions. Now I just get messages like “Emphasized an image” or “Liked an image” with no idea which image was being reacted to half the time, like in a big group chat with 10 people.

QUIK very often says “Sending…” on a picture message forever (literally), even when it’s already been received and responded to. And often fails to send messages altogether when my signal is weak, and apparently doesn’t retry in the background. It forces you to try to resend it and then it’ll say “sending” forever half the time. I routinely have to ask my friends if they received messages if they don’t reply right away. So the core functionality of sending messages and ensuring they’re sent is broken.

Picture messages are limited in size to some number you have to choose in settings. If you get it wrong the messages are guaranteed to fail. A number like 600k or 800k, up to 2000k After experimenting, 800 often fails for me, and 600 seems to work all the time, but the pictures look like crap. They get shrunk a ton. Google’s Messages app must negotiate a size with your carrier because it never makes you choose what size to use and pictures look better, too.p

No RCS. iOS will have RCS built into iMessage and I think it’ll be on by default. You’ll finally get message confirmations and encryption, and typing indicators if you like that sort of thing. I’ve tested it with my friend who already has 18 because he works for Apple and it works great.

I’m about ready to give up and just go back to Messages. I dont like that they track who you text and even send themselves hashes of your messages, but my own personal boycott of the app isn’t going to help anyone who actually needs the privacy.