Drake just released his new album on Friday. Called “For All the Dogs,” the album does include a new song that iOS and Android users might find interesting. The song is called “First Person Shooter” and it not only mentions Android phones, it also mentions green text bubbles. As you probably know, when an Android user joins a group chat that previously was made up of nothing but iPhone users, the iMessage features go away and are replaced by SMS and MMS texting.
So when an Android user joins a group chat, iMessage features such as end-to-end encryption, read receipts, high-quality images, and typing indicators disappear. The text bubbles turn from blue to green which is the reference made by Drake in his song. Oftentimes the offending Android user is insulted for not being able to afford to buy an iPhone. Ironically though, the same thing happens to Android users in an RCS group chat when an iPhone user joins the group.
In the song, Drake raps about not answering someone’s phone call and says, “She call my number, leave her hangin’, she got dry cleaned. She got an Android, her messages is lime green.” This is not the first time that Drake has brought up green text bubbles. In last year’s “Honestly, Nevermind” album, Drake had a song called “Texts Go Green.” Google, which is in the middle of a campaign to get Apple to support the RCS platform, used the song to help its cause.
#TextsGoGreen hit us different, that’s why we had to drop this unofficial lyric explainer video #GetTheMessagepic.twitter.com/dPxt9yZjCG
— Android (@Android) June 18, 2022
In the tweet, Google wrote, “The Android team thinks Drake’s new song “Texts Go Green” is a real banger. It refers to the phenomenon when an iPhone user gets blocked. Or tries to text someone who doesn’t have an iPhone. Either way, it’s pretty rough. If only some super-talented engineering team at Apple would fix this. Because this is a problem only Apple can fix. They just have to adopt RCS, actually. It would make texting more secure too. Just sayin’. Great track tho.”
Apple almost got forced to support RCS when the EU decided that iMessage is not what it calls a “gatekeeper.” According to the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), if iMessage was considered a “gatekeeper” Apple would have to open up iMessage to support RCS in its 27 member countries. Luckily for Apple, iMessage has less than 45 million users per month in the EU.
