Question I have corruption in my SMS database

[MarkC1970]

I have corruption in my SMS database, or I think I do.

I have a P20 Pro and I am trying to move to an iPhone using the 'Move To iOS' app. The process results in a few of my messages getting changed into group chats. The group members are just my contact and me. I have tried this with and without the SIM card inserted and various other options about a dozen times and it is always the same few messages that get changed into group chats.

There must be something about these specific messages that the process doesn't like and hence I think I have a corrupt database. Are there any tools or apps to clean/check the database? Does anyone have any other ideas? Thanks.

 

[smvim]

This isn't a 'corrupt' SMS database issue, it's just a basic compatibility problem involving two different platforms. Keep in mind with Android there are dozens of competing text message protocols that are by design not compatible with each other (i.e. Google RCS, WhatsApp, Telegram, etc., etc. etc.) With Apple, there's one. It's own iMessage protocol. There are only two standards that almost all the text message services support, SMS and MMS. Both are very dated and both have limitations as far as today's technology (secure encryption being a significant missing feature). So when an iPhone user sends an iMessage to an Android user, it's going to be converted on the fly to SMS. Or vice-versa. Apple recently announced it would start including some basic RCS compatibility into its iMessage app so that may or may not make all of our interactions more seamless.
(Don't forget RCS is a Google product and it's a proprietary standard. At this time, RCS is free to use and it's is publicly available, but Google being Google I wouldn't be surprised to see it do a bait-and-switch stunt in the near future.)
Also keep in mind that grouped messages are tagged as MMS so that adds another twist to the conversion of cross-platform exchanges.
So depending on how thorough that 'Move to iOS' app is, it might not actually be a 'corruption' issue but rather just file-type conversion issues. Text messaging has increasingly devolved into a real propretary standards mess, and Google has only helped make it that way. It's history of text messaging blunders is legendary:

A decade and a half of instability: The history of Google messaging apps

Sixteen years after the launch of Google Talk, Google messaging is still a mess.

arstechnica.com

 

[MarkC1970]

This isn't a 'corrupt' SMS database issue, it's just a basic compatibility problem involving two different platforms. Keep in mind with Android there are dozens of competing text message protocols that are by design not compatible with each other (i.e. Google RCS, WhatsApp, Telegram, etc., etc. etc.) With Apple, there's one. It's own iMessage protocol. There are only two standards that almost all the text message services support, SMS and MMS. Both are very dated and both have limitations as far as today's technology (secure encryption being a significant missing feature). So when an iPhone user sends an iMessage to an Android user, it's going to be converted on the fly to SMS. Or vice-versa. Apple recently announced it would start including some basic RCS compatibility into its iMessage app so that may or may not make all of our interactions more seamless.
(Don't forget RCS is a Google product and it's a proprietary standard. At this time, RCS is free to use and it's is publicly available, but Google being Google I wouldn't be surprised to see it do a bait-and-switch stunt in the near future.)
Also keep in mind that grouped messages are tagged as MMS so that adds another twist to the conversion of cross-platform exchanges.
So depending on how thorough that 'Move to iOS' app is, it might not actually be a 'corruption' issue but rather just file-type conversion issues. Text messaging has increasingly devolved into a real propretary standards mess, and Google has only helped make it that way. It's history of text messaging blunders is legendary:

A decade and a half of instability: The history of Google messaging apps

Sixteen years after the launch of Google Talk, Google messaging is still a mess.

arstechnica.com

Thanks for the reply, what you said helped me figure out the trigger. Every single one of the messages that are turned into group chats has a picture in it. Every single message that works fine is just plain text.

I haven't figured out how to fix this yet but at least I think I know the trigger. Thanks again.