phone still sends SMS message even though it is turned OFF in settings.

What exactly did you turn off? If you mean Settings App > Message > Send as SMS, that doesn't turn SMS messaging off, it just mean an iMessage recipient will not get a message initated as an iMessage as SMS (and likley will still get it as SMS if the iMessage ID is their phone number). SMS messaging is still available assuming you have the service with your carrier.

Just to be clear, if you're texting your friend, and the send button is green, it's not a time when this setting is taking effect. it has to have a blue send button and attempt to first send the imessage. if you're not seeing a break in the coversation that has an undelivered imessage, you're experiencing something different

Hi. I am having the same issue as you PATARAKC, although for me this only started happening in the last month or so. I have always had "turn sms off" in my settings on my iPhone, and am messaging with my other people who I message regularly through iMessage. In the past, if I have a bad connection at the time I am trying to send an iMessage and it doesn't go through, I get an exclamation mark, which when I press it, it asks whether I want to "try again" or "send as sms." Before the last month, I would hit "try again" and it would try to send as iMessage first, and if it fails again, I would get the exclamation mark. In the last month, I have noticed that even when I hit "try again" it just sends immediately as a green SMS. So, there is no difference between hitting "try again" or "send as sms" which has resulted in a lot of my iMessages being billed as texts. Is this a bug with iPhone? And why has this only started happening in the last month? This seems really misleading and problematic.

Does anyone know what is going on or how to fix? Please don't respond if you don't know what I am talking about or are not experiencing this same problem. I understand how to iMessage instead of SMS'ing so please responding about the basics is not helpful.

No. Like my post explains, I'm in the iMessage dialogue and am trying NOT to turn an iMessage into an SMS, which is what I think turning SMS off does. I obviously understand that I can still send SMS with the SMS turned off if I am sending to someone without an iPhone in iMessage. And again, like my post says, I am not selecting "send as SMS", I am selecting "try again" and it still sends as SMS anyway.

There is a here problem here. I use imessage to talk to my daughter in the USA (I live in London) and recently I have experianced exactly the same problems as decribed in this post. I have been sending messages to my daughter who has an Iphone and in the middle of sending messages all of a sudden one will be sent via sms for no apparent reason. It does NOT show a green send button> It just goes ahead and sends as an SMS. I have also got DONT SEND as SMS enabled. IT is also clear that I am sending to other iphones users who have Imessaging enabled. The problem I have is that although I have unlimited text messages in England I get charged for each one sent to anywhere else in the world. Something has changed as this only seems to be a recent problem happening as someone previously said in the last couple of months. I also have another friend in the USA who is experiancing the same problem sending Imessages to me (also an Iphone user) so this is not an isolated problem and is now costing quite a bit to all concerned in text charges. I think its clear that people posting here understand what they are doing and this represents some sort of bug and is not from a lack of understanding about what Imessage is supposed to do and not do.

i believe that setting makes it so that if imessage fails due to a server issue, it will attempt to resend a message as SMS. but if you can't send someone an imessage because they have it turned off, it's not really a failure on imessage's part, it's working as expected

When it's working as expected, the setting makes it so that the phone will first try to send an imessage, and if it doesn't send, it simply won't send. It will have an exclamation point and say 'not delivered.' if your phone isn't doing that, i don't believe it's isolated just to that setting. Did you or your friend ever use the current phone numbers you're using on a non-ios phone?

The only circumstance in which it would not send is if you are sending to a receive address other than a phone number (the iMessage address is an email address for example). In the case, with it turned in settings, the imessage should not send as SMS.

patarakc wrote:

ok, so to restate what I think I understand... In order for my phone to truly not send as SMS:

2) My "Start New Conversations from:" should be an email address.

No - from the context of this conversation, it wouldn't matter. It is the recipient's receive address that determines if you are connecting via iMessage or SMS.

If you or any one does not wish to receive iMessages via a ophone number, the nubmer should be removed from your AppleID. This should not effect SMS messaging.

To be clear, the set up in iOS is NOT designed to preserve or avoid standard SMS messaging. Most users are actually more concerned about preserving data and have sizable if not unlimited texting in their plans.

When u turn this setting off, it only applies to when iMessage is unavailable. So u will still be allowed to send SMS messages to others without iPhones. Sometimes when my iMessage won't send, I press the little message bubble and it says "send as SMS". Turning off this setting means that when holding down the bubble, it won't let u send as an SMS.

When u say u have SMS turned off, do u want this to prevent u from sending any SMS messages? I am pretty sure that all this does is prevent u from switching iMessage to SMS when the iMessage is unavailable (no wifi, the other persons iMessage is turned off, etc)

Ditto on Madmax688's comment. I'm experiencing the same thing. I'm in the USA trying to imessage out the country. I did suspect there was a chance this might happen so I turned off SMS and made sure the person imessaging me did NOT even have my mobile number. They imessaged my email address and for a few days everything worked fine, that is until I lost a signal and the imessage went through as a text message instead.

How my phone is texting from an imessaging email address with the SMS settings off seems to defy most basic logic.........

The worst part is when you see it turn green instead of blue and its sending but you're powerless to stop it. Fairly symbolic of the money exiting my pocket everytime this happens. 😟 uggghhh I guess I'll have to abandon imessaging my international contacts until theres a fix for this.