[Derek Schomer]

Hello all

Anything i try to do to make group messaging work properly doesn't work.

No matter what i do anything i receive comes up in the individual thread for that person, then after it takes like 5 seconds to download. That is fine, but as soon as a get in a group message with like 9 people, everything locks up.

in the stock sms app, the phone locks up for an extended period of time until it has time to download, move, and organize everything into the thread. by the time it is done doing this i can't reply to much.

i decided to try using hangouts, and this is even worse. Hangouts will only download one thing at a time, if i receive more than a message every 5 seconds or so, it downloads the first one and the rest just say tap to download. when i tap to download, they never download. So i lose all of these messages.

Should i be using textra or something?

I am a recent iphone convert and this has to be the biggest thing i hate on this phone, i love being able to customize everything and the larger screen etc, but i absolutely hate that even when i have 20 sms apps to pick from none of them work. Apple may force you to use their sms app but AT LEAST IT WORKED!!!

sorry frustrated. hopefully someone can help me quit being annoyed with this phone everytime i try a group message.

[VidJunky]

Sorry you're frustrated with the SMS so far but let's see if we can fix that. First if you've never had android before most everyone drops the stock SMS and email apps right out of the box. They are basic and basically work. If you're not into too much they probably work OK for the average to low volume user. Hangouts is less then the best. A lot of android users were hoping that Hangouts would be the next messaging and networking hub, but with it's lack of options, limited operation, and general buggyness it is leaving a lot of users frustrated. I would recommend Handcent or Go SMS. By far if you look through the threads those are the two that show up the most and either app should work for what you are wanting to do. Go is very colorful and has lots of skins at Google Play. Handcent, IMO, doesn't seem as flashy. It has skins/themes at Google Play as well. Both have some really nice features, privacy box, pattern lock, backup and so on. Handcent also has a group mode, not sure about Go but it's been awhile since I've used it so it may have one as well. Both have the option to split group threads into individual threads when sending messages. What this does is if you are sending a message to 8 people you will start 8 threads, and each person receives your message as though they were the only one receiving your message. Their replies are only to you, but I believe group mode trumps this setting if you use it to send messages. At the same time with Android if someone sending you a message as part of a group hasn't selected to break the message into individual threads your reply is sent to the group. Just a friendly heads up on that because the messages don't always look like they are to a group and replies are like replying to all with email. I think either app would sever your purpose as you described it, but you just may want to look at all of the menus and options and play with them a bit to find the one that is most to your liking.

One additional note if you use Handcent you will need to disable SMS in Hangouts or you will receive messages twice. Not sure about Go or any other SMS app and Hangouts.

GL. Post back if you need more help.