Does the Message icon on my iPhone 6 refer to SMS or something else? Is it the same as iMessage? Very confusing and frustrating that Apple's help page does not specify these basic aspects.

iMessage should automatically send to anyone with an iPhone.

SMS will send to Android phones. It may send to some iPhones if the other person has iMessage turned off.

Are you having specific issues?

~Lyssa

robson80 wrote:

Thanks, and how do I choose the iMessage preference?

You don't chose. If the person is logged into iMessage (not all iPhone users are), the phone will send the messages as iMessage. Messages in the conversation will be blue.

If someone doesn't have iMessage, the messages will be sent as SMS and will be green.

Note you do have one choice. You can go to Settings>Messages>Send As SMS. What that does is, when a the phone tries to send a message as an iMessage and it fails, it will send it as an SMS. Reasons why it could fail could be that the person has logged out of iMessage or doesn't have an active data connection. I recommend you turn that feature on.

The messages app is used to send SMS and iMessages.

~Lyssa