Why does iMessage randomly send as text instead?

I am having this issue constantly wish someone would tell me how to fix it.

imessage will only work with another person using imessage. a second reason if you do not have a data network available at the time since imessage uses data rather then being sent as a text message.

It happens to me. It will send as iMessage(blue bubble) when it has a good wifi connection. If it sends as a text(green bubble) that means it had trouble connecting to wifi or you aren't connected at all.

I think it's because the receiver is actually on the phone. Try it with your group. Have one person of the group on a call with someone not in the group. Then send your group iMessage. Everyone should receive it as an iMessage except the one on the phone call. That one should receive as a green text message.

Just my own opinion on what's happening. It happens to me daily, too, but that's because my friend is always on the phone! Lol

This has been a bug in iOS ever since iMessage was introduced. Despite having "Send as SMS" turned off, my phone will occasionally send texts (confirmed by viewing texting usage on AT&T). It is a problem with individual recipients for sure (I have not encountered it with group message, but I'm sure it still happens).

I have even observed a message change from blue to green AFTER sending. Being well aware of this issue, I am always very careful to ensure that the Send button is blue before sending (I generally make sure it's blue for a few seconds before clicking). One time, I sent an iMessage, went to Messages, and confirmed that it was "Delivered" as an iMessage. Later, I checked again and it had changed to green (text).

Annoying problem for sure!

I have finally found the right topic area; I'm having the same issue, me and my friend were next to each other at dinner yesterday; We both have Imessaging on however the cell data was very poor over where we were eating; Now my Imessage setting is the same with SMS turned OFF if no cell data is picked up; So when I tried sending her something it was blue the whole time and I sent the message. The message wasn't fully sent so I thought ok good thing I have the setting on it WON'T send as a normal SMS. However after a while I noticed she finally got the message and it was sent as a text message. This doesn't make sense to me because I had turned off send as SMS under the imessage settings. So I am going through the same issue XMasta19.

So I actually spoke with an Apple representative, and they said you have to have MMS off as well for this option to work. However the only downfall is u cannot send or receive MMS messages through your actual cell phone plan, which is pretty stupid. In other words, if you have both send as SMS off and MMS off, then the message that you send to another Imessage person will not send as a text at all, it will send as Imessage once you have cell data.

I don't think that's true (that you need to have MMS off). I played around with it quite a bit in an area where data signal (E/3G) was weak. If "Send as SMS" is on, the iMessage will try to send for a while, will fail, and the message will be sent as text. If "Send as SMS" is off, you will get a little exclamation-point alert icon saying the delivery failed.

It may be that there's a bug requiring MMS to be turned off for "Send as SMS" to function 100% correctly, but 90% of the functionaly works as you would think (I think).

huh, really? Yeah because I never got that warning bubble thing.... I mean when he was telling me this it sounded somewhat like a fallacy. But that is still an issue apple should deal with if their send as SMS functionality is not working properly

Granted the last time I tested this extensively was when iOS 5 had just come out (I was in an outdoor field type area with poor reception). The exclamation point icon doesn't pop up as an alert but just sits beside the message after failure.

Thank you for bringing up this question/problem. I too experience random iMessage to Text sending. My guess also is that whoever i'm sending to may have gone out of a good range to receive an iMessage format. Either way though, does iMessage pull from data regardless if you have a wifi signal or not? My texting is always high and a good 3/4 of people i talk to are all on an idevice.

Hope this gets cleared up, as it seems to be more common than we all realize.