What does option to "send as chat" in message app settings mean? (2024)

What does option to "send as chat" in message app settings mean? Sorry to ask such a rudimentary question but I'm 71 (almost 72) don't use massaging much. Thanks in advance for your help.

In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
~Martin Luther King, Jr.

I'm glad you asked. There's no need to apologize for wanting to learn 🙂

Send as Chat means that instead of being sent as a regular text message via SMS, it will instead be sent as a chat message via data connection or wifi if your device allows for that. SMS is still used if for some reason you do not have a reliable data connection if you chose to resend as an SMS after a failure to send notification. You will still receive standard text messages too if you have this turned on.

Think of send as Chat as the new form of text messages. You aren't limited in character length like you are with SMS messages. It also has a variety of other features such as being able to see if the other person has read your message or if they're typing back to you at the time. (It is optional to enable these features even if you are using send as Chat instead of standard SMS. And the recipient can also chose whether or not they want those features enabled in their end as well.) It also allows for attachments of a variety of file types beyond standard pictures often without any loss of quality whereas you are majorly limited in sending a standard text message with a picture. Those are always downgraded in quality and limited highly in size resulting in poor quality images being sent back and forth.)
The official name for this new technology is officially called RCS. It stands for Rich Communication Service.

If I'm being confusing I'm totally sorry about that. I'm a young guy and sometimes it's all even overwhelming for me. That's the thing is we are all always learning regardless of age if we're open to it 🙂

This is a pretty good explainer video for you as well which may help too. https://youtu.be/KS5VXmVT8Ck

- Ibuddy66

Thank you so much for your very good explanation and for the additional video which I haven't yet viewed but will as soon as I have time. Just so you know I'm not completely a novice since I've been using computers ever since DOS was the predominat OS and before there was such a thing as a desktop computer. We all used "dumb terminals" connected to a mainframe. Anyway, I digress.
I noticed there is an option to set default messaging type as: automatic, text/multimedia, or chat. I'm not sure I understand the difference but assume automatic; determines best type based on content and number of recipients, text/multimedia; allows for photo and videos, chat; allows real-time communication between multiple recipients? I don't like sending messages as chat because I assume that means recipients automatically 'reply to all' when they respond, am I correct? If I set the default to text/multimedia does that prevent recipients from automatically replying to all when/if they respond?

In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
~Martin Luther King, Jr.

I think it's wonderful that you're engaging with tech and still willing to learn.

I'm 62 and I want to be just like you in a decade.

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