iMessage Turning itself off

It's not the camera, but FaceTime the feature that you have to allow from Settings->General->Restrictions… Anyways, thanks a lot for your answer!!! 😝

I need to disable my camera for work. But I want to be able to use iMessage. I really hope Apple changes this to allow iMessage to work with the camera disabled!

Well whatever it is, it's really annoying! I want to use iMessage with my camera disabled!

I have iOS 5 installed on my iphone 4 and I also have experienced this problem several times already.

However, I don't think this problem has anything to do with FaceTime and/or the camera (not for me anyway) because both have always been enabled on my phone. Could there be different reasons depending on what version iphone you have?

Actually, it seems like it is face time for some people. I was having problems with iMessage not working but my camera was enabled and face time was disabled. Once I enabled face time, iMessage turned itself on!

I see you already answered your own question but I will reiterate it again. The reason iMessage disables itself when a user disables FaceTime is because FaceTime is an integrated form of communication in iMessage. When you are in a conversation view in iMessage you can scroll to the very top of your conversation and find three options, one of these being the ability to FaceTime that contact. Hope this helps.

But what's the reason for iMessage disabling if FaceTime is enabled? I get that the other user must have iMessage enabled so that messages do not send as texts. So does this mean everytime someone else doesn't have their iMessage enabled, mine is disabled as well? I know that it should be for THAT user, but that means I'd have to re-enable it everytime?

No- it seems that if Facetime is disabled, than iMessage would also be disabled. So Facetime must be enabled for iMessage to work. For me, I had disabled Facetime, so my iMessage would not turn on.

If your iMessage is enabled, and someone else's is disabled than you won't be able to send an iMessage to them, but that won't turn off your iMessage. With that person, you would just be sending them a text message.

I recently had iMessage disable itself on my iPhone 4S. I changed nothing - but for some reason my messages to other users that I had been previously corresponding using iMessage with - suddenly reverted back to regular green SMS text messages.

After reading this thread - I checked Settings > Messages and found the iMessage slider was set to OFF.

I did not change this. I have never disabled Facetime and have used it regularly in the past but have not actively used it in the last 2 weeks.

I turned it back on and rec'd a "waiting for activation" status - then I was prompted to sign in using my iMessage id (my email address). I have since tried sliding it back OFF then ON - and I have not been prompted to sign in again.

I suspect my phone lost contact with the iMessage server for some reason. Perhaps I was underground in my parkade and tried to send a message?

What can cause your phone to spontaneously sign out of iMessage?

I recently had this happen to me. I believe it was because I was in airport mode and it wasn't able to connect to iCloud during that time.

I found that switching date and time from automatic to manual (and change the date or time, manually) also affects iMessage. This seems to have been the problem for me. None of the above apply for me, since I have my restrictions turned off altogether.