Galaxy S9: Picture-Texts taking 4+ hrs to deliver to some contacts, others getting them right away?

[Android Central Question]

My G/F and I upgraded on Sunday to S9's, with AT&T. Today we were sending a bunch of "back to school" pics to several different family contacts. We found out later that some contacts received the texts immediately. Others didn't get them for 4-6 HOURS later, and some still haven't received. I've spent literally ALL night searching online. I found some sites with related complaints. I tried all of the troubleshooting advice, and still nothing is working. It's driving me absolutely crazy that this is happening. Does anyone have ANY advice???

 

[ztorin]

Picture-Texts taking 4+ hrs to deliver to some contacts, others getting them right away?

My G/F and I both upgraded on Sunday to S9's, with AT&T. Today we were sending a bunch of "back to school" pics to several different family contacts. We found out later that some contacts received the texts immediately. Others didn't get them for 4-6 HOURS later, and some still haven't received. And their phones/carriers didn't seem to matter. It was completely random. I've spent literally ALL night searching online. I found some sites with related complaints. I tried all of the troubleshooting advice, and still nothing is working. It's driving me absolutely crazy that this is happening. Does anyone have ANY advice???

P.S. I only have about 5 days to exchange/return, so any immediate help would be appreciated!!!!

 

[Hermes Hidayat]

Re: Picture-Texts taking 4+ hrs to deliver to some contacts, others getting them right away?

My G/F and I both upgraded on Sunday to S9's, with AT&T. Today we were sending a bunch of "back to school" pics to several different family contacts. We found out later that some contacts received the texts immediately. Others didn't get them for 4-6 HOURS later, and some still haven't received. And their phones/carriers didn't seem to matter. It was completely random. I've spent literally ALL night searching online. I found some sites with related complaints. I tried all of the troubleshooting advice, and still nothing is working. It's driving me absolutely crazy that this is happening. Does anyone have ANY advice???

P.S. I only have about 5 days to exchange/return, so any immediate help would be appreciated!!!!

im sorry picture texts as in sending pictures through sms?

 

[ztorin]

Re: Picture-Texts taking 4+ hrs to deliver to some contacts, others getting them right away?

im sorry picture texts as in sending pictures through sms?

I know, I'm sorry! It wouldn't let me go back and edit the title... MMS/texts (pictures). Just not sending them to 98% of our contacts. HELP PLEASE!!!

 

[Hermes Hidayat]

Re: Picture-Texts taking 4+ hrs to deliver to some contacts, others getting them right away?

I know, I'm sorry! It wouldn't let me go back and edit the title... MMS/texts (pictures). Just not sending them to 98% of our contacts. HELP PLEASE!!!

well i hope this helps.
https://thedroidguy.com/2018/06/sol...nding-pictures-through-text-messaging-1086068

 

[ManiacJoe]

AT&T's texting limits are probably not helping you any.
ATT has the smallest number of allowed recipients on SMS/MMS messages.
ATT is at the smaller end of the data size limit on MMS messages (600-1000 KBytes).

Which SMS app are you using?
Or different messaging service?

Are you getting any error messages?

 

[Adam Frix]

Re: Picture-Texts taking 4+ hrs to deliver to some contacts, others getting them right away?

For the record, it's been my experience with T-Mobile that every time they give me a new SIM card the APN is screwed up somehow and either I need to rebuild it, or they need to tweak my account on the back end to fix things like this.

It looks like the same thing is happening to you with your new SIM cards from AT&T.

 

[anon(5719825)]

Re: Picture-Texts taking 4+ hrs to deliver to some contacts, others getting them right away?

My G/F and I both upgraded on Sunday to S9's, with AT&T. Today we were sending a bunch of "back to school" pics to several different family contacts. We found out later that some contacts received the texts immediately. Others didn't get them for 4-6 HOURS later, and some still haven't received. And their phones/carriers didn't seem to matter. It was completely random. I've spent literally ALL night searching online. I found some sites with related complaints. I tried all of the troubleshooting advice, and still nothing is working. It's driving me absolutely crazy that this is happening. Does anyone have ANY advice???

P.S. I only have about 5 days to exchange/return, so any immediate help would be appreciated!!!!

I had this same thing happen when I first got a line on AT&T. My signal on AT&T is so poor at my house during the daytime that I have to have WiFi calling on and that also helps with SMS/MMS. Since I've been using WiFi calling, messages come in within a minute or two of them being sent. How is your signal?

At night, usually after midnight, I can turn off WiFi and use the data connection.

 

[D.P.G.]

Re: Picture-Texts taking 4+ hrs to deliver to some contacts, others getting them right away?

Had the exact same issue but fortunately I purchased an unlocked S9 Plus. I removed the AT&T sim picked one up from another carrier and everting worked perfectly. I don't have an explanation but I have 2 phone's on 2 different carriers and most time when I text to a phone regardless if it's Android or iPhone on AT&T something is wrong. Yesterday dollar signs were appearing on the AT&T phones as upside-down question marks.

 

[B. Diddy]

I merged duplicate threads.

 

[Rukbat]

How long it takes for an SMS or an MMS to reach the recipient is entirely up to the sender's carrier and the recipient's carrier. It has absolutely nothing to do with the phone! So all you can do, ztorin, is find out what AT&T's current limits are, and break up your sending to those limits. (They might have a limit to how mush space you can use on their server, and once you send an MMS it stays there for ... either until it's downloaded or for a certain amount of time after that - check what they're doing this month.)

If you want to send a lot of pictures to a lot of people, put them on Drive, in a folder you set to share, then SMS a link to the folder. But only 10 at a time - that's their current limit. (That may also have been what caused your initial problem - if you sent them to more than 10 people, everyone but the first 10 would have been dropped.)