iMessage while traveling abroad

iMessage requires an internet data connection. It will use either a cellular service provider's internet data connection, or a wifi data connection. But without any internet data connection, iMessage cannot send nor can it receive.

SMS text messages are a service handled by your cellular carrier, and are transmitted & received over the came cellular channels as voice communication. SMS texts do not require a cellular data connection, but they do require a cellular voice connection (MMS however, will require a cellular data connections - MMS uses both a cellular voice for the SMS text component of a message, and a cellular data channel for the non-voice portion).

So if you turn off cellular data, then you must ensure you are actively connecting to a wifi network in order to get your iMessages. If you disabled both cellular data and wifi (or were never in range of or connected to any free wifi) then your iMessages would not be delivered until your phone next connected to the internet.

Ummm..if you disable cellular data then you won' be able to receive iMessages or text messages. enable WiFi if you want to receive imessages.

How does messages work if the recieving part does not have acces to a data network?

It doesn't.

henrikfromgöteborg wrote:

That is just nonsens..

Oh. Okay. Whatever. You got me there. I must be lying to you for no reason. Maybe because I have nothing better to do? If you don't want to accept the 2 responses given to you, then why did you come here?

You're over thinking this way to much. If a phone is capable of receiving text messages then chances are it has an active data connection, therefore sending an iMessage is not a problem. if an iMessage is not able to be delivered, then you can send it as a text message by tapping and holding on your message and select "send as text message." problem solved.

henrikfromgöteborg wrote:

So what you mean is that every time i send an iMessage, I have to ensure myself that the reciever has acces to an internet connection, or the message will not be recieved?

If i know that the reciever does NOT have acces to an internet connection, i have to manually go into the phone settings and disable iMessage every time i send a message to that person to force it to send a SMS message instead?

If I don't know whether the reciever has acces to an internet connection or not, then what shall i do? I thought that the system was smart enough to determine this by itself and force a SMS message every time an iMessage was failed to be recieved?

You cannot know whether or not the recipient's device is even turned on, let alone what it is connected to. All you can do is send. Yes, if they are a registered iMessage user, the message will go to their iMessage account and sit there until they connect their device to an internet connection. Just as if you send an SMS, and they are in airplane mode, the SMS will sit on their carriers server until they reconnect and the message can be delivered.

There is no way for you to know beforehand what type of connection the recipient has at that moment, whether you are sending an iMessage, an SMS, an email or whatever. You send whatever you are goint to send, and the recipient will receive it whenever the particular messaging service is able to push it out to their device.

The iOS messaging app will only send as SMS if the recipient is not a registered iMessage user with an iMessage receive-at address registered with the iMessaging system. Otherwise, like any system, once registered, your incoming messages are held by the server, and delivered when you connect.