Disable iMessage for certain people

I'm only replying since I want to follow this thread.. I have a similar issue... I want to only SMS my wife on her iPhone but iMessage my daughter on her iPod...

How is it there is still no solution to this? This is a serious usability problem. My mother does not have a data plan but Messages keeps insisting on trying to send her iMessages when I text her, which she doesn't get until she gets back home.

How can there not be a way to disable iMessages for a contact?

Without knowing how you store your contacts, but when you create a new message and select your friend, if their contact contains an email address (used for iMessage) and a tel no., then you select the tel no and it should create the green SMS bubble. If you want to send an iMessage, then you select the email address.

After that if you just go into the Message app and select a conversation history, just select the conversation depending on the method you want to use as there will be 2 for your contact.

I set up my wife's contact with her iphone # and email... I cleared the old messages and then tried starting a new one (from the contact - not even in the message app) and it immediately defaulted to iMessage... if I touched the message it gave me the option of sending as sms but then it's two messages and no savings on data...

I even tried deleting her phone # from the contact and putting it into a separate contact but it somehow still defaulted to iMessage..

Not sure what to do next...

I'm having the same issue. My partner has an iPhone 3GS but switched to Android recently but still uses the iPhone at home as in iPod. However now after upgrading the 3GS to iOS5 if I try to send an SMS to their number it will iMessage the iPhone and not SMS to the Android, so I have to disbale iMessage altogether to send an SMS to their actual phone.

Surely there is many people in various situations like this. There should be a way to disbale certain contacts from iMessage altogether or at least some way in the message composer to choose the transport method per message.

I am having the same problem, I gave my old iPhone 3Gs to my girlfriend, and when I upgraded the 3Gs to iOS5 it asked for a sim card. I put in her sim card from a samsung phone into the iPhone just to activate the phone. I put her sim card back into her samsung and now when I send her a text it goes to the iPhone even though it has no sim card.

Now I am experiencing this with a friends iPhone I setup earlier. What I said above doesn't work with his contact on my phone, but it still works for anothe contact I have. Will explore this further.

I checked out my friends phone and the reason why I was able to choose either an SMS or iMessage was because on his phone, he only had his iMessages to be received at his email address only.

However at that time in his message settings screen, it was still saying waiting for activation. After he went into the "received at" screen and waited a few seconds, it added his phone number to the received at, and now I can no longer choose as it creates an iMessage no matter what I select.

I think the reason why I was able to choose SMS or iMessage was because his phone number hadn't yet been activated for iMessage, just his email address.

I have pretty much the same issue as you all - but a slight variation therein.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3397594?tstart=0

I am hoping that the simple answer will be that you can access the list of numbers associated with iMessage through your AppleID, via iTunes or however, and deselect numbers. If that functionality isn't available yet - I hope it will be at some point in the future.

I have this exact same issue. Any idea what to do about this yet?

Bump. Just was hoping someone else had resolved this already.

On a recent business trip, I asked at the AT&T store in Arlington, TX and according to them there is no way to change the default from iMessage w/o just disabling iMessage... hopefully Apple will release that in the next iOS release..

There is no way in your own device to be selective about which contact you iMessage wiht. You only have the option to completely disable iMessage. In my case the problem has been solved by disabling iMessage on my partners iPhone that no longe has a sim card in it.The alternative would have been to buy a cheap pre-paid sim card to re-activate the iPhone and therefore their iMessage account would be attached to a different number.

I have the same problem. I upgraded to the iPhone 4S and sold my iPhone 4 to a friend. He started getting messages from people that had iOS5 and using iMessage, who was texting me. Good thing I didn't sell it to a stranger. This is a huge problem.

From what I've read I think your issue is easily resolved (not guaranteed though)... Go to settings and then click on messages and check the "Receive At" settings. Your old email addy might still be listed and / or phone number. You will have to establish a new email address and that might help (I had that issue with my kid's iPod and that cured it)