Now try sending to an at&t iPhone. By your experience it seems that Apple is limiting iOS-iOS image size, to promote iMessage. That's inherently not a bad thing, and wouldn't matter if iMessage wasn't a platform gatekeeping/discrimination tool. I say discrimination because of the GenZ opinion on blue/green bubbles.

  Now try sending to an at&t iPhone.

Why? Sending a message to a Google Voice number will always happen over SMS or MMS. iMessage does not work over GV. RCS does not work over GV. If you mean try receiving messages from an AT&T Android phone, sure, I've done that. No complaints, although AT&T seems to throttle the image size more than other carriers in my experience.

  By your experience it seems that Apple is limiting iOS-iOS image size, to promote iMessage

What? If I were sending messages to an iOS device directly it would go out over iMessage. Instead I chose to send a message via MMS to a Google Voice number where Google serves as the end device. iMessage does not work over Google Voice. There. Is. No. 200. Kilobyte. Limit. There's no gatekeeping, just shitty carrier MMS implementations.

Are you sending that to another iPhone? Trt exchanging text messages between an Android phone and an iPhone. It's completely broken. Apple wants to force Android users into iPhones so that their tect messages stop sucking, as if it's and Android issue.

  Are you sending that to another iPhone? 

No, I'm sending them from an iPhone to Google Voice via MMS. iMessage does not work over Google Voice. All that an iPhone knows is that the Google Voice number is not an Apple device.

  It's completely broken.

Yes. MMS implementations are terrible, just like carrier implementations of RCS.

   Apple wants to force Android users into iPhones so that their tect messages stop sucking, as if it's and Android issue.

Repeat after me: Poor MMS implementations are not Apple limitations.

> No, I'm sending them from an iPhone to Google Voice via MMS. iMessage does not work over Google Voice. All that an iPhone knows is that the Google Voice number is not an Apple device.

> Repeat after me: Poor MMS implementations are not Apple limitations.

Except that some of my family cannot send me a text on my Android phone because iOS absolutely refuses to treat it as anything other than an iMessage. Their contact for me does not have my iMessage/iCloud email. My iMessage/iCloud account has had my phone number deregistered from it. However, their iPhones cannot send me a text. It always sends it as an iMessage, even on threads where I send a text from my Android phone. Any reply just goes straight back to iMessage.

There are plenty of instances where Apple just does not care about text messages and protocols and will refuse to treat them properly. It is absolutely anti-competitive. They have been taken to court over this, which is why there is even a website that allows you to deregister your number. You used to have to use your iPhone to do it, which isn't exactly convenient if you lose or steal it. If you switched to Android, there was no way to get a text message from an iOS device while your number was registered with iMessage.

Does the MMS protocol allow querying the receiving device capabilities? As far as I know it doesn't, and I don't know how else iOS would know the receiver is an android phone to be able to purposefully downgrade the experience just for them. Unless your theory here is that if a contact number is in your contacts list as ever being iMessage compatible that it will always use higher quality even when sending over MMS? That seems easily testable by sending to an iPhone over MMS, and then removing the contact from your address book and messages and sending again over MMS

Why would you think that discovery would have to be an SMS/MMS thing?

Since you’ve never used an iPhone, let me explain the experience. When you type in a random new number it starts off green. If the user uses iMessage, once you finish typing it magically turns blue. Apple doesn’t care about whether the other number is an Android phone per se, although if it’s not using iMessage then it’s almost certain that the number routes to an android phone.

Because the assertion was that the OP's experience with sending MMS media in excess of the supposed 200k limitation must have been because they were sending to an iPhone. In order for that to happen, the sending phone would have to know the receiving phone was an iPhone so that it could enable "send bigger pictures to iPhones over MMS" mode. They can't retroactively change the media size once they've sent the message, so either somehow Apple is determining the receiver capabilities over MMS before sending the message, or the 200k limit isn't real / is a carrier imposed limit.

  because they were sending to an iPhone

No, I was sending it to a Google Voice number which means it goes out via MMS. Google no longer does SMS/MMS forwarding so I logged into the Google Voice site and downloaded the image that Google received via MMS. There is no 200 kilobyte limit.

I really love how folks are frothing at the mouth over things they don't understand.

Their link references MMS not iMessage.

How does Apple get around that MMS limitation?

  How does Apple get around that MMS limitation?

They don't, nobody does. Android users exchanging high quality media are using RCS, iPhone users exchanging high quality media are using iMessage. Fanbois pinning the blame for this on Apple are missing the role of telcos entirely.

Yes I know, it was sarcastic. They don't get around it, they use a different technology all together.