Are iPhone’s Push Notifications killing SMS?
For the first time in a very long time, I used a title to rope you in. Congrats and thanks for clicking through and you won’t be disappointed.
Push has been around for a while. In the mobile space, it was popularized by RIM’s Blackberry devices as a way to communicate via short messages or email instantly. Instead of the device checking for updates all of the time which can destroy battery life, a technology was invented that keeps a consistent and low power connection with the RIM network to deliver messages instantly. It is RIM’s greatest strength. Of course, network downtime on RIM’s side means that every Blackberry is a sitting duck until it comes back and that’s a problem. You can brush up on “Push Email” here on Wikipedia.
When the iPhone was released in 2007, I switched from Blackberry and my hyper-checking of emails suddenly turned from “buzz” and check to “check” and buzz. The reason why is because Blackberry received a push email instantly and then it would buzz but the iPhone required I open Mail, it would initiate a check of all mail servers on the device and 1.5 minutes later (remember this was before 3G), I would get a buzz. Sure, it checked mail every 15 minutes automatically but that wasn’t enough for me.
However, at WWDC in 2008, Apple announced push notifications for iPhone and that it would be available by October Apple may have underestimated this technological achievement because push makes sense on paper but technically, it’s a very hard feat to accomplish. Despite Apple’s promise of a fall release, it took a full 12 months for push to be released on the iPhone and we got it as part of the 3.0 update just this summer.
The Wikipedia Entry about the “Apple Push Notification Service” is short but here’s what Wikipedia says:
The Apple Push Notification Service is a mobile service created by Apple Inc. that was released with iPhone OS 3.0 on the 17 June 2009. It uses push technology through a constantly-open IP connection to forward notifications from the servers of third party applications to the iPhone or iPod Touch; such notifications may include badges, sounds or custom text alerts.
Apple first announced the service on 9 June 2008 with a slated release for that September; however, as stated by Scott Forstall at the iPhone 3.0 preview event on 17 March 2009, the rollout was rolled back in September after a decision to restructure the APNS for scalability purposes due to the allegedly “overwhelming” response to the announcement of the APNS. At both events, Forstall stated that push notifications were a better means to maintain battery life than background processes (which are used for pull technology) as far as receiving notifications are concerned[1].
Basically, it says what I’ve already covered in far less words. This is why I love including Wikipedia entries in blog posts. Now that we’re all caught up, let’s continue.
Before push notifications, I used SMS for everything. SMS would notify me of Twitter direct messages, when my company had a new message on Yammer or when someon commented on a blog post, checked in on Brightkite and even when I received a comment on one of my photos posted. SMS was reliable, fast and instant but it seems like 10 of my frequently used applications now use push so more and more I’m disabling SMS notifications and relying on PUSH instead. Here are some applications that I use PUSH notifications with instead of SMS.
- Boxcar – Twitter, Email & Facebook notifcations
- Gpush – Email notifications
- FourSquare – location updates on where my friends are
- Flight Track Pro – Flight delay and change notifications (used to get SMS updates from the carrier)
- Weatherbug Pro – Alerts of severe weather in my current location
- Tweetie – Specific Push notifications from Twitter friend updates
- AIM – New IM notifications
- Yammer – updates from people I work with at my company
Not all of these had SMS alternatives before but the only SMS service I have enabled now is Twitter DMs. Why? The reason is AT&T coverage. My SMS usage has been cut in half since push notifications on the iPhone were released. Data usage has gone up but battery life has also improved because I’m not checking Tweetie and Mail.app every 5 minutes religiously just in case I have a reply or new message. Instead, I hit my phone’s home button and see if anything is new and do this under 5 seconds. Why not get rid of my unlimited SMS plan?
Twitter DMs are crucial to me. I’ve received 9 thousand DMs and sent about 11 thousand of them. That’s a LOAD of direct messages. AT&T’s network just isn’t reliable enough. SMS comes through even if 3g & EDGE is not working. If I have one bar of service, an SMS message is pushed right down and I can reply within the messages application. By letting Tweetie 2 or Boxcar 2 deliver DM notifications using Apple’s Push network, there’s a chance I wouldn’t get them until 5 or 10 minutes after the person sent them. Furthermore, I’d open Tweetie to reply to that app and the 3G signal would disappear and I’d be stuck and unable to reply to that DM.
Why are direct messages so important? Well, to be honest I don’t text message or even call my friends anymore. over 90% of my conversations take place using direct messages on Twitter. I have nearly 4,000 friends on Twitter and that means a phone book of 4K people just by knowing their Twitter ID. I will schedule a lunch with someone and not even know their email or hone number. It’s all over Twitter so when I’m running late to a meeting or can’t find the restaurant, I send them a DM and of course it’s a two lane highway so they may cancel lunch while I’m on the way and I won’t get the DM because there was no 3G coverage in that spot.
I think that eventually Push notifications on the iPhone will result in me reducing from a $30 a month unlimited SMS plan to the $5 a month 200 messages package. This will only happen if AT&T improves their Internet coverage to be more reliable. From a business standpoint, why would AT&T improve it then? Think about it, I just told AT&T to invest more money into improving their service so I would be able to pay them less money. Yeah, that really makes sense.
Then again, I’d be a happier customer so we all win eventually. I can’t wait to completely move away from SMS and go from a few thousand SMS messages a month to only 150 but that will require that I can ALWAYS trust that the push will be sent to my phone instantly and not delayed at any time no matter what. When that day happens, I’ll be a very happy camper.
