Ah, but then you lose RCS (if you ever get it to work)
I throw shade sometimes, but texting on Android is in a bad spot. I have family who struggle with it.
Discussion
What's RCS?
Googles attempt to add features similar to iMessage. It’s been a nightmare, because they allowed carriers to implement it themselves, and federation never worked right.
From what I understand, Google is now trying to bail it out by doing it all themselves.