Problem with SMS Galaxy S4 with International SIM Card

[toolworker]

The SMS issue only arises with a 4G connection, so you wouldn't see it if you don't get 4G. And it might be peculiar to T-Mobile; I don't see references to AT&T in a quick search. And it doesn't affect MMS.

 

[Hazem Abolrous]

Nightmare. I can't believe an Android phone would ship with such a bug. Bought phone at Best Buy, traveled to Europe, bought a local SIM card. All my Google contacts have + (country code) in front of them. I can dial numbers direct, but without the Plus Sign (+). I can't dial anything in my address book. Researched it and painfully so, I found a third party app (prefixer) that does the trick after trying a few. You basically want to add "00" in front of the +.

It's simple enough, but I don't care for the fact that it's not native to the phone. Here is the configuration below - best of luck

 

[Nikkye_xoxo]

I believe I have found a solution to this problem.

I had a similar issue. I work in Azerbaijan, but keep my US Verizon Samsung Note 3 and swap SIM cards when I travel. I too was having the issue of not having my outbound text messages received, unless I removed the country code and prefix. However, as this is how my contacts were stored and how the inbound call-ID labelled them, this was very frustrating and time-consuming.

In the end, the solution is to utilize the Assisted dialing feature, with some modifications (phone dialer>settings button>call settings>assisted dialing [tap to edit]). When I chose the country for the assisted dialing, it correctly selected my country code as 994. However, in order to make my texts work I had to manually add in the "+" sign. now the phone recognizes the "+994" that is in all of the contacts and inbound phone numbers. texts now seem to works as they should. Also, be sure to turn the assisted dialing on.

Hope this helps all of the other travelers out there.

-Alex

This is brilliant, thank you so much. One question tho, will it stay like this on its own? Or will it randomly automatically switch back to 4G, & go back to the original assisted dialing setting?