Galaxy S6 messaging acting weird

[kameramandan]

Hi,

I have two identical Galaxy S6 phones for work, one I use regularly and one spare. I dropped my normal one a few weeks ago and the screen stopped working so I busted out the spare one, but the messaging app is acting weirdly and I can't figure out why. I can't access the original phone to see if there's any differences in the setup, but I don't remember making any major changes to messaging (i.e. different app or anything like that). The old phone was definitely using the Samsung messaging app with the yellow icon, same as the spare phone, and the spare phone was factory reset before I started using it (it had been someone else's phone for a while).

Here's a summary of what it's doing:

• Long outgoing text messages are being converted to MMS at a certain length, and instead of showing up as text in the main message screen they show up as "(No subject)" rather than displaying the first line of the text under the recipient name. These messages have no data, just long text.
• When the long messages are sent to multiple people, one particular recipient receives a blank message.... to get it to work I have to split it into two messages to stop it converting to MMS and re-send it. He had no problem receiving long text messages from the previous phone.
• Another particular recipient receives the message OK, but when he replies all the recipients receive his reply rather than it just coming to me.
• Incoming MMS messages don't download, I get a white box with (No subject) and I have to tap that to download the image. I did fix that today by enabling "Auto Retrieve" under Multimedia Message Settings, but I thought it might be relevant.

All of these things started happening the day I switched to the spare phone.

Here's the message app settings:

Messages settings

• Swipe to call or send messages: ON
• Enhanced Messaging: OFF

More settings

• Push Messages: PROMPT
• Cell broadcast: OFF
• Delete old messages: ON

Text messages

• Delivery reports: OFF
• Input mode: Automatic

Multimedia messages

• Delivery reports: OFF
• Read reports: OFF
• Auto retrieve: ON (was OFF, changed today)
• Roaming auto retrieve: OFF
• Set restrictions: FREE

Any help would be appreciated, I need this phone for work so I don't want to start messing with these settings without knowing what they do first..

Thankyou

 

[Rukbat]

Long outgoing text messages are being converted to MMS at a certain length, and instead of showing up as text in the main message screen they show up as "(No subject)" rather than displaying the first line of the text under the recipient name. These messages have no data, just long text.

Set it to allow breaking up long messages. Those are your only choices - multiple SMS or a single MMS.

When the long messages are sent to multiple people, one particular recipient receives a blank message.... to get it to work I have to split it into two messages to stop it converting to MMS and re-send it. He had no problem receiving long text messages from the previous phone.

Same thing.

Another particular recipient receives the message OK, but when he replies all the recipients receive his reply rather than it just coming to me.

Same thing.

Incoming MMS messages don't download, I get a white box with (No subject) and I have to tap that to download the image. I did fix that today by enabling "Auto Retrieve" under Multimedia Message Settings, but I thought it might be relevant.

Check your APN - the MMS section is probably wrong. (Google your carrier to get the right settings.)

 

[kameramandan]

Set it to allow breaking up long messages. Those are your only choices - multiple SMS or a single MMS.

How do I set it to break the messages?

EDIT: I've done some Googling on this.... my previous phone would definitely send the messages as one message (I send job messages to my personal phone a bit and they've NEVER been split), but all of the issues I'm having started when I changed to this spare phone.

Is there another setting that could possibly cause these issues? My previous phone was not splitting them into 160char messages, but these issues weren't occurring.

 

[kameramandan]

I got the screen on the old phone replaced and it turns out there's a bunch of differences:

• Old phone is on Android 6.1 and the new one is on Android 7.0
• Old phone is on messaging app 2.x and new phone is on 4.0.58
• Old phone DOES NOT show "MMS" above the time next to the sent message, regardless of length.
• Old phone DOES NOT show the message "converting to multimedia message" after a certain number of characters are entered.
• Long messages appear as one message on the old phone and one message on the phone the message is sent to
• The two specific problems (one recipient not getting them and another replying to all the recipients) do not occur on the old phone

I understand the changes in Android and Messaging versions are likely a bit part of this so the question kind of changes; is it possible to set the new phone's messaging app up to send long text messages like the old one did?