In my experience, SMS is still many times worse. Long messages arrive out of order and parts sometimes do not arrive at all. I've had messages to friends on AT&T delivered 36 hours late, causing confusion.

iMessage, on the other hand, has mandatory delivery confirmation (so you can at least know if a message is going to be problematic) and optional read receipts.

Is SMS really that bad in the states? It works pretty flawlessly in the UK.

Yes. It's why iMessage exists (and was welcomed with open arms) in the first place.

To the people saying this is not a problem, it is. In particular, iMessage seems to often get confused when trying to send a picture. The progress bar will get to half or even mostly full, and then just pause ...forever.

It's not a connection issue. On several occasions after running into this iMessage issue, I have emailed the picture full-res without problems.

That said, I don't think iMessage is terrible. I love it when it works as expected.

Odd, in the UK I get almost 100% success - plus you get the handy delivered (and optionally read) notifications.

Never had such problems. I use it both from desktop and my phone, works just fine.

Never had this problem, and with one exception everyone I text with has an iPhone.

I've never experienced this. Sounds like a general network issue, not an iMessage issue. Junk network equipment at home? Badly oversubscribed LTE/3g in your area?