IPhone Android Text Messaging Incompatibility

My iPhone 14 Pro (just purchased, running iOS 16) won’t send or receive texts to/from Android users.

I have tried (without success):

1. reboot
2. downloading all updates
3. Turning on “send as SMS” in the even recipient does not have iMessage
4. confirming the user is not a former iPhone user (making deleting the phone number from iMessage necessary)
5. there is no option to removing send/receive via email address (so that the only option would be phone)

Anyone else find another work around that consistently delivers?