how does iMessage work?

Send them an iMessage, and if you don't get a reply try a text. Or just send them a text and ask them if they have an iPhone and appropriate iOS. Or phone them. 😉

imessage allows you to send texts for free to other ios devices through the mail app.And you have to have a apple id enabled for imessage to use it.

Yeah im fairly curious how this will work as well. I don't know the details just the general idea of it.

im sure we'll find out in a mere 5 days. I would believe there will be two seperate apps. one for iMessenger, and the other for our regular text messages.

Or one app with two tabs. and you can switch between the "text" tab and "messenger" tab. although these are all speculations. i have no idea 😝

I would think it extraordinarily unlikely that the Apple would allow you to only converse with other iOS 5 iPhone users, and block you from the rest of the world.

that makes sense

My imessage says not delivered ive resotred i have wifi the person im sending it to is running iOS 5 and its activated and still cant figure out why its doing that help please

same i got ios 5 about 1 hour ago on my iphone 4 device and i cant understand how to work it like wat is the difference between normal message app and imessages i cant find out how to imeessage people could some 1 plz help me because i cant find i message my message app is just the normal message one?? Thank you

send a message to someone that has IOS5 and the bubble will appear blue

there has to be another way to do it. The reason I say this is becuase imessage is supposed to be compatible with people who use itouch and pads. If thats the case then having something other than a phone number (apple id maybe??) might be whats necessary

I guess we'll all find out soon enough. Ill have my 4s tomorrow. yay me

it's based of the registered email address. If you go under the imessage tab and select Receive At, you will see your apple ID and then you will see an email address under the "You can be reached for messages at:" section. Under the caller ID make sure it's selected. The iPad and iTouch work off of email address and not phone numbers. I had to add a second email address and get it verified, then told my friend to send the a message to the email address from her phone and it went through with no problem. I hope this helps shed some light on things.

Here's my experience so far:

iMessage is seamlessly integrated into your regular messaging app. When you open the app after your iOS 5 upgrade, you will not that those in your list who have already upgraded, even before you've messaged them, will enable your (newly) green 'send' button to be blue, therefore you know you're using iMessage even before you send one. Those who have not upgraded, or do not use iOS 5 at all will be green. Think of it this way...blue = free green = cost (or you know, will be part of your plan). I've included a couple of screen shots so you can see the difference.

Following on from all this I have a query....I have iOS 5 on both my iPhone 4S and ipad2...when I receive an iMessage it comes to my iPad OR iPhone, but not both (as an email would. Is this something iCloud is supposed to sort out??

Thanks