Summary
- Weird question marks appear in texts sent from iPhones to Android devices, affecting some Canadian carriers.
- Adding special characters or emojis might temporarily fix the issue, but its cause remains unclear.
- Apple announced RCS support for iPhones with iOS 18, which will improve the texting experience across these platforms, but it has not publicly debuted yet.
Text messaging between iPhone and Android users as it stands now is a poor experience. These text messages resort to SMS or MMS protocols, which are less secure than RCS, owing to a lack of end-to-end encryption support. The RCS protocol also offers a range of features that users expect to have access to in 2024, like read and write receipts, group chats, emoji reactions, support for sending and receiving high-res photos, and more. iPhone users have access to all the mentioned features, but only when texting other iPhone users over iMessage or using a third-party messaging service like WhatsApp.
After years of complaining from both sides involved, Apple has finally succumbed, and during its recent annual Worldwide Developer Conference, the Cupertino-based tech giant announced that RCS support is coming to iPhones with iOS 18. However, the stable OS build is still a few months away, likely to drop in September, and until then, it appears that the messaging experience between Android and iOS devices will continue to be poor.
Related
What iPhone getting RCS means for Android
We’ll still be in green bubbles, but our pictures shouldn’t be blurry anymore
A new issue, likely because of texts resorting to the SMS protocol, is causing weird question marks to appear in texts sent from iPhones to Android devices. This appears to be an issue isolated to a few Canadian carriers, and only appears when an iPhone user sends a text message to an Android user, and not the other way.
We’ve seen reports of the issue on the Pixel, Samsung Galaxy, and Koodo (Canadian carrier) subreddits, with several users expressing their frustration. “My husband has a Google Pixel and all of my spaces and letter d’s are question marks this morning,” “Happening with me and one of my friends, but not another. They both have iphones and i have android,” “I’m also having this problem and alot of things are really hard to read and it’s getting annoying,” “Ugh this is happening to me, I have iPhone and my husband is on a Samsung how do we fix it it’s so annoying.” These are just some of the comments on Reddit about the issue, suggesting that Bell, Telus, and Rogers users are all affected.
There might be a temporary fix
While this isn’t certain to work, it appears that adding a special character like ‘&’ or an emoji might temporarily fix the problem. I can tell this from my own experience, and several Reddit users also suggest the same. In a brief text conversation with MobileSyrup Editor-in-chief Jonathan Lamont, who was using a Pixel 8a, my messages, sent from an iPhone, appeared with weird question marks, as seen in the screenshot above. Both Jon and I are in Canada, and on the carriers which seem to be affected. Messages received on my iPhone appear as intended.
It is currently unclear if this is a Google issue, or isolated to certain carriers. We’ve tried to replicate the issue in the US to no avail.
