Captivate not receiving text messages

[G.murph]

Hello all. I know it says I am brand new here, but I have been browsing for a few months. Anyway, I recently received the captivate in the mail as a replacement for my samsung impression. It was working beautifully for the first week, but then last night I discovered that I was not receiving SMS messages (my friend on fb chat told me she sent me a few). I restarted my phone and bam, 7 unread messages spanning back over an hour. All the messages were sent from AT&T phones.

The phone has not been rooted, and the only apps on it are Pandora, Twitter, and Facebook. The problem only started occurring a few hours after I installed Facebook. I doubt that's the problem, but you can never be sure, it's not exactly a great app.

Any suggestions? I'm at a loss. I only have this phone after a 6 month ordeal with 4 impressions (with 3 different sim cards) not sending/receiving texts causing me to restart 4-5 times a day. I really don't want to have to do that here. Plus, how am I supposed to know when I am NOT receiving a message?

 

[Raven71]

I'm having same problem but with email. I was getting no mail unless I turn the phone off and do battery pull. Then I get emails and also ones that I already deleted. Now I'm getting emails from a week ago. Then nothing until I pull the battery again. Then it sends everything I deleted already.
Even my maildroid is acting this way. I started having this problem 3 days after the ota update. I then did the oclf hoping it would fix the problem along with some other things. Well it helped with some of the other things but not the mail. So I keep looking for solutions but I think it is on the att servers and not the phone.

 

[anneoneamouse]

g.murph your problem sounds like an account issue on the ATT side. Unless you're in an area that gets poor cell tower reception?

 

[bdpyo]

Advanced Task Killer from the Market place will do the same if you do not exclude it.

 

[G.murph]

I actually have great service where I am, almost always between 2-4 bars of 3G service. Could the network still withhold messages regardless?

And I haven't downloaded ATK, so nothing like that should have effected the messaging app.

ETA: This may be unrelated, but the issue didn't occur until I did a software update (to ECLAIR.UCJH7). Every time I restart the phone now the device management system pops up saying "congratulations, software update complete!" and I have to hit "okay" for it to disappear. Shouldn't it not say that anymore?

 

[fldude99]

I'm thinking this is an att thing. I'm having the same issues on a nokia device..I guess when you get a new device, any issue is a phone issue. Not sure what's going on..but same thing..my daughter asks if i got her texts..i reboot the phone and wham..i have like 9 text msgs out of the blue

 

[Musicmasta]

I had this problem once, Do you text a lot? I text quite a few messages each month and I think the inbox just gets to full. I remember with my berry I had to clear the message box out, or it would receive anymore messages... Now I understand that with the mass amounts of storage this phone has, that this seems like it would not be the case. Trust me, clear your messages, restart that sh*t, and it will be working like a champ again!

Dan

 

[G.murph]

Thanks for all the responses, guys! Really appreciate it.

Dan, I do text heavily, actually. It's a problem. The phone never mentioned anything about reaching capacity, but I deleted some threads, anyway. I had about 6 or 7 around the 200 messages mark, oops lol. I can't tell if it's done anything yet.

Here is my question now: my roommate (with Verizon) was mentioning that some of his texts weren't getting to people. I've noticed that I haven't been getting any texts from people on Verizon (or if I do, it's 7-8 hours after they sent it). My friend with an iPhone also reported the same problem. I assume something is wrong with one of the two networks in my area, but it's strange and annoying, especially considering the people I text most are a 50/50 split between at&t and Verizon. Do you think this problem is related to my problem the other day (getting the 7 after restarting?) I think most of those texts were from people on at&t, so I'm not sure if it's the same problem.

Why can't these things just work properly?

 

[anneoneamouse]

g murph - I think I may have found your problem. There seems to be a 200 text message limit per conversation on the phone (at least for Froyo).

Re-iterate- this works for Froyo- not sure about 2.1 / JH7.

Go to the messaging app,

Hit the far left hard key > Settings > Delete old messages (check this)

That should open the option to change number under "Text message limit" (which is 200 for me).

Also pay attention to to the MMM limit per conversation (default at 20 for me).

Hope this helps,

AoN.

 

[Redneckbutlerboy]

It could be the settings on the phone already posted but since you say you had problems with another model phone with several sim cards it sounds more like a back end thing. Are the people your not getting text from all on AT&T or other networks? Their is a 3rd party company that the carriers send sms/mms to and they deliver them to other carriers. Sometimes a ticket has to be issued to them for them to fix the routing....but that should only be the problem if all missing text are from outside AT&T. If some are from AT&T then it probably is a phone/account setting. I'll do some digging and see if I can find some settings for you.

 

[Redneckbutlerboy]

Go through this. It's the first thing they will have you do if you call in. Let them know you found the article on line and went through it but you'll go through it again with them. That will be the quickest and smoothest way to get it escalated to tier 2 as I don't think their is any other device specific articles in AT&T's system for it. If the customer service rep wants to do anything crazy before getting you to tier 2 like a master reset just remind them that the phone gets the messages after a battery pull which is making it reconnect to the network which should indicate an account/network issue more then a device issue.

https://www.wireless.att.com/answer-center/solutionDisplay.jsp?solutionId=KB110889

 

[fldude99]

I have (had) this same problem on my unlocked unbranded Nokia device. What I had to do was call ATT and have them "refresh" or re-do me somehow to the network. So far it seems to be ok

 

[frozencloud]

So there is a cap of 200 messages per conversation??? Is there anyway to make it unlimited?.....I like to keep my messages like when I was on my blackberry which was only limited by the RAM I had..

 

[Redneckbutlerboy]

So there is a cap of 200 messages per conversation??? Is there anyway to make it unlimited?.....I like to keep my messages like when I was on my blackberry which was only limited by the RAM I had..

The most it will let me set it to after Froyo is 5,000.

 

[jusAphone]

When your Captivate Stops receiving Text messages, then try deleting all Messages, pull the battery for 1 minute... reinsert and if that doesn't work a master reset will need to follow! Hope this helps