Why is there a tiny blue speech bubble next to one of my contacts?

I've read a lot of conflicting info re that tiny empty blue text bubble icon next to a contact - including the contributions above. My wife has a Blackberry (so no iMessage) and my son a Samsung/Android (so no iMessage), but both have the empty blue text bubble icon next to the telephone icon in their contact information in my iPhone. So the bubble has nothing to do with iMessage.

I thought maybe it indicated that I had sent a text message to a contact at some point in the past, but I have contacts to whom I sent text messages who don't have the text bubble icon.

I thought maybe it indicated that my correspondent had kept our past conversations on their phone, but I've run experiments deleting those conversations, and the icon remains. I thought it might indicate that I had kept our past conversations on my phone, but no.

Does no one have the definitive answer?

The little blue speech bubble became apparent to me after I was interrupted while typing a text message with a second text message. After responding to the second message, my original text was gone. Then, when I searched for the persons name to begin again, I noticed their name had a small blue speech bubble next to it, as if iMessage was trying to tell me there was a draft, or unsent message, waiting. I was unable to recover the original message, however, and had to start again. I restarted iMessage just to see what would happen and the bubble went away.

I'm wondering if iMessage keeps drafts somewhere, and if so, how to recover them.

Definitive answer: it simply means that iPhone reckons the corresponding number is capable of accepting text messages (either SMS or iMessage). It's as simple as that.

I think Lisa McKelvie is correct. The person in your contact list still has your message history up on their phone. If they erase your previous message to them, the bubble will disappear.

I think that I finally figured it out. The "speech bubble" appears when you have sent a recent imessage. I'm not sure of the actual time frame, but it could be within a 24 hour period because I went back to imessages from today and yesterday. The contacts where I sent an imessage in the morning didn't have a speech bubble, but those in the afternoon did.

I then checked my contacts and found one where I knew that they had an iPhone. There was no speech bubble, so I sent an imessage and then it appeared (she has a iPhone 4 and I have a 4s, so it doesn't matter the version).

Mystery solved, I think!

so what if the app is still running? what is the impact of that? does it mean that my message stream is still visible to the other person even though i have ended it from my side? not sure if i should be concerned about the app still running.

p.s. how do i actually terminate the app?

It means that contact is using iMessage. But I have the same issue where people I know are using iMessage do not have the icon...

Whenever that happens it means whoever your calling or texting has a iPhone but whenever there is a green dot it means he/she has a device other than an iPhone such as a Samsung or and lg etc....

I realise this thread is a few months old now, but I'm pretty sure it simply means that the contacts with the speech bubble next to them are set up to use – and available to receive – iMessages.

Why Apple make it so hard to find these things out, I'll never know 😕

I was wondering same thing. And I couldn't find a suitable answer on the Internet. So after reading I played around with it.

Here's the answer: the tiny blue speech bubble appears if two conditions are met. First condition, the person has an iPhone and their iMessage capabilities are set up. And the second condition, the blue speech bubble appears, if YOU the texter, never officially terminated (stopped the message app from running in the background) the message app in that texting session.

How I tested this was to text myself. When I texted myself & went to start a new message (w myself) the tiny bubble appeared. So I erased the message. And started again, the same thing happened, tiny blue speech bubble was there. However when I terminated the app completely and then begin to once again send myself a message, the tiny blue speech bubble next to my name was GONE.

The only other blue icon mentioned I found in the iphone_user_guide 5 is this one:

I always though it was the contacts who s till had your iMessage open in text messages. Not 100 % sure