Texting unreliability

[Shadnic]

I have a T-mobile HTC One M8, and I tend to use wifi calling/texting at home and just rely on the regular cellular signal for everything else at work, around town, etc. I have some...special issues with texting that have been slowly driving me crazy and I'd love if anyone could help with some solutions or even possible causes.

I've had the M8 for like 3-4 months, before that I had a nexus 5 which occasionally had "some" of the following issues, but never this many this often.

When texting, I'll often receive multiple copies of a text, sometimes minutes apart, when the sender only sent it once (I think I've received up to 6 copies of a text before and sometimes they'll be coming in like 10-15 minutes later than the original). There doesn't seem to be any pattern to which texts it does this with or how often, but it happens every day and with different people.

Secondly, I sometimes just don't receive texts from friends. Ever. One of my best friends went through like 2-3 weeks before we discovered that I was actually not getting about a third of the text messages he was sending. It was like messages sent at certain parts of the day would just never be delivered, but then ones later would. He had timestamps to show that they sent, but my phone never gets anything. He switched to using my google voice number and there were no more issues.

Other times, I'll receive texts HOURS later. Say I'm texting with my boyfriend. Sometimes 4-8 hours later I just get a random text with a comment from a conversation we were having hours ago, and his phone shows the timestamp of it being sent back when we were actually texting. My phone just doesn't get it until a million years later.

And just to be extra special, sometimes my texts don't get received until hours later, even though my phone says that they were sent. I'll send, say, three texts over the course of 15 minutes (this happened yesterday). One of them went through on time. The second one was received by my friend about 3 hours later, and the third one came in an hour after that. However all other texts were able to be sent/received with no delay in and during that time.

Some of these (the multiple messages) tends to happen more often when texting on wifi, but all of them have happened on wifi or just cell signal I'm pretty sure.

Does anyone else experience these?? What on earth can I do to make my texts actually reliable? I use google hangouts just in case that's relevant.

 

[Gekko]

1. maybe there's a problem with the handoff between wifi and cellular.
2. also - maybe try the official Google Messenger Text App -

https://forums.androidcentral.com/e...e.android.apps.messaging&hl=en&token=11fAZWr7

good luck.

 

[raptir]

yeah, I'd give Messenger a try. I have similar issues with using Hangouts for texting, which is unfortunate because I really like the Hangouts/SMS integration.

 

[Shilohcane]

I had that delay problem with T-Mobile using a Android third party MMS app called Textra on my Nexus 5. I hate Hangout that does have the T-Mobile GBA authentication certificate. T-Mobile won't give Third Party SMS/MMS Apps something called GBA authentication certificate. So Textra has a option for T-Mobile to turn off Wi-Fi for a second when getting or sending a text. Textra turns Wi-Fi back on when the text is complete. This MMS texting problem all started when T-Mobile enabled Wi-Fi calling on their network. If you have Textra go to the setting and look for the T-Mobile MMS fix. You can call T-Mobile customer support a 100 times and they won't have the answer. If you aren't using the phones native MMS App then download Textra and go to the setup and use the T-Mobile MMS fix.

Check here for Textra; MMS not working on T-Mobile WiFi – Textra SMS

 

[Shilohcane]

Secondly, I sometimes just don't receive texts from friends. Ever. One of my best friends went through like 2-3 weeks before we discovered that I was actually not getting about a third of the text messages he was sending. It was like messages sent at certain parts of the day would just never be delivered, but then ones later would. He had timestamps to show that they sent, but my phone never gets anything. He switched to using my google voice number and there were no more issues.

Now if you ever had a iPhone with your current number and forgot to turn on iMessage on your way off Apple then any of your friend that have your phone number on their iPhones will not be able to text you. iMessage isn't a true MMS it goes through Apple's servers and if you left Apple's phone they won't deliver your texts from people that have iPhones. Many people call this Apple's Revenge on Traitors. I haven't got one text from my sister since 2011 when I tossed my iPhone and moved to Android.

These problems stem from the fact that iMessage service is tied not just to your Apple ID but also your phone number, and operates over your data connection rather than your carrier’s cellular network. In court papers, Apple posits it never promised iMessages or Messages would recognize when a user switched to a different operating system.

Apple loves this iMessage Revenge and I saw it work on one of my friends that got a new Samsung Note 4 to replace her iPhone just two weeks ago. She got frustrated by her son that owned a iPhone that she couldn't get his texts. I quickly told them how to fix the issue but by that point she hated Android and had already scheduled to return the Note 4 for a new iPhone 6+. Apple knows this iMessage works in getting customers to return to Apple.

APPLE HIT WITH FEDERAL LAWSUIT OVER IMESSAGE DELIVERY ISSUES

 

[nicol8tor]

I have had terrible problems with texts not being recieved by either me or friends (it is usually just one or two numbers) for TWO years and I am totally over it. I have been informed by technicians that it is an android issue that is being worked on but has been an issue since JAN 13.

I also have messages that corrupt. (ie attaches an old message to a current message). Cant send messages over 1 message length or it is likely to stuff up texting function. Also sending photos can stop texting working. Over the time the issues have occured I have changed sims, providers and phones. The only consistent themes have been Samsung phones and the android network.

 

[Shadnic]

@Raptir and Gekko, I had forgotten about google messenger! It certainly looks nicer than the one stock from HTC. I downloaded it and used for half of today. It was all going well (I could actually send and receive MMS on wifi which was something new and exciting), but after a few hours, it just....stopped working. I would send a text and it would just say "sending" for about 30 minutes and then fail. I would use my other texting apps (stock messenger and Textra which I now also had installed), and they would send texts, but Messenger just would not. I have no idea why it stopped working but both on wifi and just cell signal it now just isn't doing it. So I guess that one is a no-go for now.

@Shilohcane, thank you so much for all the advice! I have never used an iphone so none of the imessage issues apply, but Textra was such a great recommendation, it's fantastic! Not just a great looking and well designed app, but the tmobile work-around sounds perfect (I've yet to test it thoroughly, but I'm excited that it exists). It's definitely going to be my default SMS app for now.

My main issue I'm still experiencing is getting duplicate messages on wifi. It happens "all" the time, even with these new apps. Tmobile tech support told me it's from not deleting texts on your phone, but I have message limits set to 100 per thread, and I definitely do not have multiple 100+ threads, so really there's nothing that should be throwing my M8 for a loop here. Plus it only happens on wifi, so there's obviously some connection there. It's not the end of the world as much as the other bugs were, but it's still annoying.

 

[zorak950]

No issues worthy of note here.