Native WiFi texting

[brmiller1976]

Wireless "texting" and "calls" are a feature on Android, iOS and BlackBerry that allow a user to use VOIP as a replacement for mobile. It's useful in buildings that block signal, but only T-Mobile in the USA offers it.

Chances are that the text you thought you were sending over WiFi actually managed to trickle out over a tiny bit of cellular signal. Texts are low-bandwidth enough to do that.

 

[fwaits]

There is something else at work here if it does truly work. It's not native SMS, that is a carrier technology not something the phone OS can override unless there is some 3rd party service in between mediating the message to a bridge of some kind. Not sure without seeing first hand what is going on, but it's not some magic Apple phone feature over any other device.

 

[Ebaneeezor]

ok the results.

Took my friends ATT iPhone5 and set it to data off (which shuts off everything but wifi) and he texted me again, I took the phone, and noticed he had 1 tiny bar in the signal, which explains the text getting through, however, his cell signal was turned off, i turned it off. So in a nutshell - somehow with 4g/LTE shut off, cell data shut off, he IS able to send text still, but somehow maintains a low signal which could lead to the fact that iPhone has also installed a low band or dumbphone signal within the phone that is always on.

So, at least the mystery is solved - its a faint(1 bar) signal thats is persistant with 4g/LTE shut off.

 

[Nataku4ca]

ok the results.

Took my friends ATT iPhone5 and set it to data off (which shuts off everything but wifi) and he texted me again, I took the phone, and noticed he had 1 tiny bar in the signal, which explains the text getting through,

lol, well, tbh the easy way to get around this tiny bar is to pull the sim card out (do iphones still work with out a sim card? i know i had a few dumb phones that wouldn't turn on if there were no sim card... but i would expect iphone to still work with out one)

 

[Vheissu]

The reason this works for an iphone and nothing else is because of imessage apple handles all messages through their native messaging app which is connected to their servers via a data connection not a cellular connection. So any message sent out of an iphone goes to the imessage server and then sent as a sms if its going to dumb phone or whatever, but if it goes to another idevice it stays an imessage. Thats why the iphone can work over wifi only.

 

[fwaits]

The reason this works for an iphone and nothing else is because of imessage apple handles all messages through their native messaging app which is connected to their servers via a data connection not a cellular connection. So any message sent out of an iphone goes to the imessage server and then sent as a sms if its going to dumb phone or whatever, but if it goes to another idevice it stays an imessage. Thats why the iphone can work over wifi only.

That should only work one way however. An incoming SMS from a non-iPhone would have to see the phones cellular connection otherwise the message won't get there. So the case of using SMS over WiFi extensively depends on the target device.