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What is the definitive answer to SMS (yes normal SMS) on an IPAD with a SIM card?

Having just for an Ipad Mini 5 (for Foreflight) I have been setting up the other stuff on it e.g. email.

And I ended up revisiting the old issue of SMS, which I last played with 10 years ago on an Ipad 2. Then I concluded that unless it is jailbroken, you cannot send or receive SMS unless the incoming SMS has a “telco” tag. So as you go to different countries etc, you do receive SMS messages from say Vodafone.

10 years later, the Ipad 5 seems to be exactly the same.

The internet is full of people asking whether you can do SMS on an Ipad The answer depends on whether it is an Apple site, or not. If the former, they say Yes and then divert the discussion to the “Continuity” link (which enables an Ipad, even one without a SIM, to send/receive SMS via an Iphone) or to the i-message system (which works only to other IOS devices, or perhaps Macs – all while avoiding the straight answer. If the latter, and you spend more time googling to make sure you are not getting the Apple-Apple discussion again, the answer is No (which isn’t quite right because telco SMSs are received) and then it diverts to stuff about email2sms gateways etc etc…

And as usual most of the hits are ancient and refer to Settings items which don’t exist, or exist on an Iphone but not on an Ipad.

If you jailbreak it then you can do it all, but then you can’t run banking apps, can’t run Foreflight, and probably can’t run any satnav app which licenses Jeppesen terminal charts (reading between the lines, this is a Jepp OEM licensing condition).

Why SMS? Basically for 2FA, like Paypal uses. Also a lot of banking uses SMS for anti fraud and there is no other option. For most human messaging one uses whatsapp, telegram, etc.

So you cannot use an Ipad as a backup for your phone if you need this functionality.

Does anyone have any new info on this?

I have set up VOIP easily but again this works only for outgoing calls. For incoming you have to buy/rent a number. This is OK, as a backup for making calls.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Don’t Ipad minis have a slot for a sim card.
The one our examiner used at our seminar on the use of SDVFR as a EFB certainly did and IIUC he mentioned that it cost an extra €2 a month on his Bouyges phone subscription.

France

Yes they do, and mine has. An Ipad without a SIM slot doesn’t have GPS (the two always go together) which makes it useless for “our” purposes.

The point here is that while an Iphone with a SIM can do SMS and GSM voice calls, an Ipad with a SIM has both functions blocked (with the stated exception of SMS messages from your SIM provider).

It is just dumb and pointless, but presumably Apple want to sell an Iphone to everyone with an Ipad

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

I send almost no sms anymore. Get a data only sim and use iMessage / Telegram etc…

I get all sms from 2FA to all my devices, even without a sim card (eg Macbook). I suppose the iPhone is the master and passes it on to my other devices.

I can check later weather my ipad does standard non data SMS.

always learning
LO__, Austria

I get all sms from 2FA to all my devices, even without a sim card (eg Macbook). I suppose the iPhone is the master and passes it on to my other devices.

Exactly; reading between the lines, you need an Iphone as a pass-through device to do standard SMS on an Ipad. Apple simply blocked anything else.

There are all kinds of apps which do SMS but they are all subscription services which basically give you a UI for “SMS-like messages” and the data is sent over wifi/4g/etc to their server, and you need to pay some $$$ because SMS is not free to send. Been there, set that up many times. But this is daft because I already have a contract SIM in this Ipad, £8/month, and should be using that.

This is almost entirely for 2FA / banking security type usage, where SMS still rules.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Peter wrote:

The point here is that while an Iphone with a SIM can do SMS and GSM voice calls, an Ipad with a SIM has both functions blocked (with the stated exception of SMS messages from your SIM provider).

Yet another reason to stay far away from i-Products

The elephant is the circulation
ENVA ENOP ENMO, Norway

Sure; they are intensely irritating and will drive you completely around the bend. The only solution is to fully capitulate and become a full member of the Church, not question whether God exists, accept that the Church is right in everything, and then the sun shines and the birds sing. You never know where anything is, but it doesn’t matter. You cannot fight the system. This explains it all.

Unfortunately, no IOS = no Foreflight, and no IOS = no Jeppesen data (on any portable device; they still work on a PC).

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Can android tablets be used to talk / send sms via phone lines instead of data?

always learning
LO__, Austria

Yes; that’s I was doing with this SIM card in one of those. The phone and SMS stuff is in there already.

In reality I also set up VOIP (for outgoing calls only; incoming has issues) where there was no GSM signal (or no roaming) but I had “hotel wifi”. This is no problem with the Ipad also.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

And at no extra cost or fuss. It’s just a matter of inserting a twin sim-card.

The elephant is the circulation
ENVA ENOP ENMO, Norway
21 Posts
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