I’m not a fan of the “war” between Android and Apple when it comes to SMS/texting. The rest of the world doesn’t use SMS/RCS/iMessage as much as WhatsApp and the like, so the US is pretty much lagging behind everyone else on this anyway.
That being said, I have to admit Android did a good job with this!
It is less that people use SMS and more that people just don’t use WhatsApp. I have a mix of group chats, including some with SMS and Facebook Chat. However, no one uses Whatsapp.
Yeah I use Facebook Messenger and Snapchat to keep up with friends and RCS/SMS mostly for family. Never used WhatsApp before though.
I would say that was the case in the UK generally about 5 years ago. But WhatsApp increasingly took over as the norm because it was clean, quick, relatively well encrypted, and made sending gifs and stickers easy and fun for the average user. Plus, the youth aren’t only wedded to iPhones unlike the US increasingly.