What Does The Green Background Mean In Sprint Text

Light-green chimera, you say? If you lot don't know what I'm referring to, here it is: when iPhone owners use iMessage to communicate with other iPhone owners, their message bubbles are bluish. When an Android user joins the chat, their message bubbling turn green. It's a simple way for iPhone users to know that certain iMessage features volition not work anymore because in that location'due south an Android device in the chat.

While this seems fairly innocuous and even necessary, the "light-green bubble" feature has taken on a life of its own — and not in a proficient way. Some iPhone users the world over — but mostly in the U.s.a. — mock the green bubbles that announced in their iMessage feed, even going and so far as to create colloquialisms such as "green texts don't get texts back."

This mental attitude might seem childish simply harmless at start glance, merely is actually a existent trouble with existent consequences. Immature Android users, in particular, increasingly feel left out within their group of iPhone-using friends considering of this green chimera phenomenon.

Editor'southward note:This article was originally published in August 2019. Information technology has been updated with new information for 2022.

Yep, green bubble dismissal is a existent thing

iPhone 13 Pro review showing back in hand

Dhruv Bhutani / Android Authority

If you're not an iPhone user, this might exist the first you've heard of this. If you're an iPhone user who doesn't live in the US, yous besides may never take heard of this, as platform-agnostic messaging apps are much more than pop throughout the rest of the earth (WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, WeChat, etc.).

Take this article from Cosmopolitan with the headline "Bad news: Bachelor Nation'due south Mike Johnson is an Android guy." In it, the author talks about how Johnson seems like the perfect man, but since it's at present been revealed he uses an Android phone, he might non be worth fawning over anymore.

In a tweet included with the commodity (since deleted), one person even goes so far as to say, "Is Mike still able to exist the available if he has an Android?"

Hither's a peculiarly cavalier snippet from the commodity'southward writer:

Yeah, it's a petty fleck harsh to approximate Mike on his questionable smartphone selection, but come on. Choosing to buy an Android is such a weird flex. People volition tell yous they did information technology considering it has a "really nifty camera" or is waterproof or something, but TBH, an Android could literally fold my laundry and I still wouldn't strength my friends to look at greenish text bubbles.

You might exist thinking, "OK, well this is a sassy, one-half-joking article in Cosmopolitan, so who cares?" Well, Samsung seems to care. The globe's most successful smartphone manufacturer actually created a folio of animated GIFs Android users can transport to iPhone owners who criticize their dark-green bubble letters.

In an commodity summarizing (and heavily criticizing) Samsung'due south GIFs, The Verge went so far as to say that when dark-green bubble arguments come upwardly, "the only fix, really, is to get an iPhone."

These are just two examples, but I could find many more on Twitter, Instagram, and fifty-fifty YouTube. Just rest assured that this green chimera problem is non simply sensitive Android users complaining well-nigh snooty iPhone users similar some bygone "iOS vs Android" relic of the by. This is legitimate antagonism.

Why is this fifty-fifty happening?

Google Pixel 6 Pro vs Apple iPhone 13 Pro Max displays

Eric Zeman / Android Authority

I will readily concede that iMessage users need to accept some sort of signifier that a person in their chat does non utilise an iPhone. The green bubble characteristic might not be the most aesthetically pleasing solution, but it's unproblematic and effective. If it didn't exist, iPhone users might get frustrated when they repeatedly try to use an iMessage characteristic and find information technology doesn't work correctly.

There are people out there who recall Apple tree intentionally made the green bubble color equally ugly as possible as a subtle dig against Android, and that strategy may be swaying iPhone users to literally non associate with Android users.

In this article from The New York Postal service, a professor named Grayson Earle posits that theory. The article itself is well-nigh various people who refuse to even message with "green bubbles," including a woman named Katie McDonough who will not appointment a man who uses an Android telephone.

"If it'southward non a blue message, I'k not going to bother flirting with yous further," she told The Post. "I'm just similar, 'Why don't you accept an iPhone?'"

For some people, it seems the idea of non owning an iPhone is alike to not owning a stick of deodorant.

To explicate this complete lack of compromise McDonough exhibits, she says she depends on iMessage features. For example, when the person she's texting reads her message, she is notified of that. And, when the person is in the heart of composing a response, she is notified of that too. These two features don't work with Android users, though, so she wouldn't know if her message has been read or if the sender is composing a new text.

Forth with these read/writing notifications, iMessage users take the ability to react to messages with Emojis. Android users don't run across these Emojis (although Google has somewhat fixed this) and can't add ane themselves. Instead, they receive a text that says "Liked [full original text hither]," which is hardly as fun or effective.

Some friend groups will even create a new group conversation of only iPhone users and then that all iMessage features are intact, further excluding Android users.

In this Twitter thread, Ben Bajarin from Creative Strategies tells the story of a 16-year-sometime boy who switched from Android to iPhone specifically because of this exclusion phenomenon. "We would beginning a new group chat, and the group would realize I was the reason it was green, and they would start another grouping chat without me," Bajarin quotes the boy. He also mentioned that the boy admitted that he missed his former device: a Google Pixel phone.

Let'southward be honest: It'south nigh income and status

Robert Triggs / Android Authority

The boy mentioned above who switched from a Pixel to an iPhone but to fit in with his friends seems similar a modernistic case of a normal teen problem: the desire to not exist an outsider and instead be a popular member of the in-crowd.

If nosotros choose to see it like that — and only that — information technology might be piece of cake to shrug information technology off every bit an age-old problem that just happens to be manifesting itself in a new, technological manner.

That belittles the result. Let'southward expect at the problem from a more than classic standpoint and imagine that instead of an iPhone, these groups are talking about something else — let's say a pair of fashionable shoes.

The iPhone is more than than just a telephone. It'south a condition symbol non unlike a designer purse or a luxury car.

These shoes are all the rage: you can see celebrities wearing them and people lining up around the block just to get a pair. But since they are and then fashionable and and then popular, they're as well expensive.

For children built-in into families with fiscal stability, getting a pair of these shoes is relatively easy. They merely ask their parents for them over and over again, and eventually, they'll get them. It might take until their next birthday or Christmas, but those shoes will come up.

For kids born into families without financial stability, though, those shoes probable won't ever come. With that in heed, it becomes very easy to visibly ascertain the rich kids and the poor kids when walking through the halls of whatever given high school in the United States. Just look at the shoes.

Related: Which iPhone is correct for you?

The iPhone — every bit much equally nosotros Android users don't like admitting it — is no dissimilar than these fictional shoes. Even though in that location are plenty of Android smartphones out there that cost simply as much (if not more) as a make new iPhone, the perception in the United states of america is that Android phones are cheaper and "less than" when compared to the iPhone. Many young people will run across some other young person using a smartphone that isn't an iPhone and immediately assume that they are non absurd and probably poor.

The people who have nothing but disdain for green bubbles in their iMessage chats might try to argue that the only reason they hate those green text boxes is considering of how information technology messes up iMessage features, as Ms. McDonough told The New York Post. But let's be real: the iPhone is a status symbol and but affordable for people in a certain income bracket, so in that location are some iPhone users out there who see a green bubble and recollect, "this person is not function of the in-crowd and likely not wealthy."

A green bubble = Android in iMessage, but in the eyes of some iPhone users, a green bubble = poor person.

In a way, The Verge is correct to say that the all-time way to not experience that kind of rejection is to just get an iPhone. Buy one used or opt for an older model that might exist less expensive. Hell, become an iPod Touch on if you lot demand to. But that's non a solution to the actual problem, that'southward just caving in to peer pressure, which is something we are all taught from a very immature age is universally bad.

And where does Apple stand on all this? Google has rightly called Apple out for essentially profiting off this green bubble animosity. However, Apple has stayed silent on the matter. After all, why rock the boat if information technology'due south helping bring in record profits? In fact, the only thing nosotros know for sure about Apple's thoughts on iMessage bullying is that information technology once noodled with the thought of bringing iMessage to Android, but dropped the idea when information technology realized that would perhaps hurt sales.

Honestly, I don't know what to tell that poor kid who felt he needed to get rid of his Google Pixel simply to appease his friends who kept kicking him out of chats. On ane hand, I'd dear to tell him to stick to his guns and go along the telephone he wants and tell his friends to deal with it. On the other paw, I know that kind of pressure can be daunting for a teen — afterward all, I was 1 myself at i betoken.

I guess the best advice I have for him and for anyone else stuck in this predicament is fairly simple: remind your friends that the green bubble they are criticizing is not merely a chimera — it'south you. If your friends nonetheless exclude yous afterward you tell them that, your option of smartphone is not the problem.