How to Send High-Quality Images and Videos from Android to iPhone

Having friends or family with different phone brands than yours can lead to all sorts of daily annoyances, from trying to help you navigate unfamiliar settings to failing when you need a compatible charger. One such issue may occur while sharing photos and videos on these devices, especially between Android and Apple phones. While sharing media between brands has always been relatively intuitive, preserving quality has not always been so straightforward.

For the longest time, sending a photo from an Android device to an iPhone usually lowered the quality a few notches. It came down to the different messaging systems – Apple using SMS (Short Message Service) and Android using Rich Communication Services (RCS). Fortunately, in addition to adopting Apple Intelligence and deeper customization, iOS 18 ushered in support for RCS on iPhone, which not only resolved the gap but also gave iPhone users access to the superior image quality available through RCS.

Naturally, if you are an iPhone user and want to preserve image quality across the board, you need to make sure RCS is enabled. Fortunately, iOS 18 has RCS enabled by default, and you can easily check if it’s enabled if you want to be sure. Just go to Settings > Applications > Messages on your iPhone, scroll down to RCS Messagingand check that it is activated in green.

Of course, more can be done to ensure quality. If you’re on the Android side, Google Messages will always send photos in compressed form by default; To maintain quality, you will need to press the HD or HD+ button before sending. Here, just make sure your media is set to “Original HD+ Quality” rather than “HD Optimized for Chat” to avoid compression and maintain the original file quality.

There remains the question of larger file and video sizes, both of which can fall victim to compression, not to mention the RCS attachment size limit of 100MB. There are a few options to use here, such as email or alternative messaging services, but Google Photos stands out as an easy option when sharing on an iPhone with Google Photos. Google Photos app users, when sharing an image, can select “Send to Google Photos” and share it with another app user. Along the same lines, Google Drive is also a solid option for sharing large files between different brands.

It’s also worth noting that Android Quick Share now supports AirDrop. This feature is available on Pixel phones starting from version 8a, as well as a number of Samsung phones (including much of the Galaxy S family). If your Android phone isn’t compatible with AirDrop, you can tap the “Use QR Code” option in Quick Share (accessible through the same “Share” option when you select the content you want to share) and have an iPhone user scan that code. Although this is more limited in scope, it is at least a solid last resort.