Let’s say I have a phone and I send messages to friends, one through encrypted messaging, and one through un-(non?)encrypted messaging (do these even exist anymore?)
What makes the former more secure? How does one access the latter?
If someone has your phone password they are of equal security of course, but if they don’t then what protections does the encrypted service offer that the unencrypted one doesn’t?
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Fully unencrypted messaging is pretty rare. This is where you simply send the contents of the message, and anyone who has any sort of access to the network can read it. This was the case for the original email services, 2G SMS, and is still the case for some intentionally quasi-public channels like HAM radio. Even here snooping can be hard, e.g. if you have to physically tamper with a wire carrying the signal, but this is the source of the whole “public internet routers can read your data”.
Most messaging is at the very least encrypted between you and the service provider. The service provider might be the website (e.g. Facebook, Google) or physical provider (e.g. cellular base station for SMS). Even if someone is sharing the network that you and the provider are on, they will not be able to read the messages. However, the provider can read the messages, even if you’re only intending to send it to a friend. The provider can also share this message with someone if they choose, like law enforcement.
It is now becoming popular to use messaging services encrypted between you and the recipient, or end-to-end encrypted messaging. This means that the service provider also cannot read the messages, they can only see that messages are being sent, and who is sending/receiving them. These included many popular service like Telegram, Whatsapp, Wire, Viber, but notably not Facebook Messenger (unless you enable the Secret chat mode).
There are various even stronger forms of privacy that also attempt to hide even the metadata of who the sender/receiver are, like Signal’s [sealed sender](https://signal.org/blog/sealed-sender/) system or [SimpleX chat](https://simplex.chat/), but those are not yet dominant.
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