Switch From Apple to Android Phone - Blocked Texts

Not getting all your texts after switching from an iPhone to a Google Pixel phone? The solution: deregister your number with Apple's iMessage here. Read on to learn more: I recently had an two-year-old Google Pixel phone with a great camera that went black unexpectedly while taking a picture. Google replaced it for free with a one year newer model. But, I did have to mail my old phone to them and wait for them to ship the replacement – so, in the meantime I used my husband's even older iPhone and just put my SIM card into it and switched it over on Verizon's side. I used the old iPhone for two weeks for texting and calls. Then, when my replacement Google Pixel phone arrived, I moved the SIM card into it and activated it with Verizon. All seemed to be fine, but, I found out that I was not getting all the texts people were sending me – I was getting SOME people's texts, but not all. I went into my local Verizon store and they swapped out my SIM card to see if that would fix it, but it didn't. That night I called Verizon's tech support and the guy thankfully knew the problem – he asked: "Are you only not receiving texts from iPhones?" – well, I didn't know for sure, but I knew that two of the people trying to contact me had iPhones and I wasn't getting their texts, so it was likely. He said that Apple iMessage was likely intercepting the iPhone texts to my number, and suggested I go to Apple's Deregister page to fill out the form here to have my number removed from iMessage: selfsolve.apple.com/deregister-imessage Apple says that if you don't have access to your iPhone, you can deregister iMessage online. After you complete deregistration, your phone number is removed from iMessage services. So I went ahead and filled out Apple's Deregister Form and entered the confirmation code to "delist" my phone number from iMessage's world.

If you switch to a non-Apple phone and you are not getting SMS/MMS messages, you likely need to deregister iMessage.

It's true, I didn't realize this, but Apple iMessage basically hijacks text messages sent from iPhones so they never come through to the Android or other non-iPhones once your phone number is in their system. Your phone number gets into the iMessage system by simply putting a SIM card from a non-iPhone into an iPhone. Be patient: According to Apple, after deregistering your number, you should be able to receive text messages right away but it might take a few hours for some Apple devices to recognize that you're not using iMessage when they send you a message. In my case, it did take a few hours before I was able to have a friend test it and receive the text message. I did NOT receive any of the texts that people had sent to my new Google Pixel phone prior to deregistering my number with iMessage though, so those texts were lost to the matrix unless I wanted to retrieve them on the old iPhone (I didn't).