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Android phone receiving SMS late/out of order from iPhones

This started a few days ago. I’ve been getting texts from friends with iPhones in the wrong order, and seemingly they are getting mine late. So I texted a friend whose grandmother was in the hospital yesterday, and her conversation with me looked like this. These texts from her arrived around a minute apart each. I think the intended order of them is fairly obvious. It’s worth noting that every time I send her a text, the read receipt line under the text shows a little clock for a few seconds or more, which I think means it hasn’t been recieved by her phone yet. Also worth noting that I had a conversation using the same stock messaging app with my mom yesterday who has an android and I don’t think we had any such issue, but that may have actually been RCS.

Anyway, here’s the example. It’s not the only example I’ve had with her or with another iPhone-using friend in the past couple days.

Me: Hey, how’s your day? Any updates about your grandma?

Her (a few hours later): I feel relieved

Me: does that mean you got good news?

Her: how was your day?

Her: yeah

Me: my day was good, (proceeds to describe what I did that day)

Her: my family feels relieved too

Me: what was the good news? Your grandma is okay?

Her: Hey $bionicjoey, I didn’t get much sleep last night but I just heard that the doctors say my grandma is out of danger.

Edit: I texted her last night saying something weird was going on after that exchange, and then this morning at about 7:30 AM I texted her saying “let me know as soon as you get this”. She just texted me at 2:30pm saying “I just am just now seeing your texts”

wahming ,

The world really needs to move away from SMSes…

M500 ,

It looks like Apple adopting rcs is a step in the right direction. But I don’t trust them not to screw it up on purpose.

he_is_matt ,

Same sitch, it happens off and on. I’m on Android, most of my extended family is on iPhone (except my brother). Our group texts are generally fine, but like 10% of the time these weird things happen where messages are out of order, or don’t go through at all.

I think as others have said it’s just SMS/MMS vs. iMessage, and until there’s any semblance of a unified protocol, this is what we have to deal with.

Mostly it’s just a nuisance, but missing picking someone up at the airport because of it one time was not a good thing.

bionicjoey OP ,

Yeah or if the girl I’m dating is telling me that her grandmother with a medical emergency that caused her to stay up all night waiting for updates from her family and just got cleared from the hospital and my response is “so is your grandma okay?”

Desistance ,
@Desistance@lemmy.world avatar

The cell network controls SMS/MMS delivery. iPhones use iMessage between iPhone users unless the user forces it into SMS mode. That would explain why you got it late.

bionicjoey OP ,

Why would it change all of a sudden though? Her and I have been texting with no latency or mixed up message delivery for like a month and the problem only appeared this week.

kick_out_the_jams ,

It could be carrier related - shout out to that time a bunch of Valentine's Day texts arrived in November

bionicjoey OP ,

So it might not even be my personal carrier, it might be some lower level carrier that my carrier is connected to… That’s annoying.

bionicjoey OP ,

More info if helpful: I’m on a Fairphone 4, I’m in Canada, my carrier is Freedom Mobile, I’m on Android 13, I’m using the stock “Messages” app. I’ve had normal SMS conversations with both of the iPhone friends, so this is new.

vikingtons ,
@vikingtons@lemmy.world avatar

I’ve had MFA token code delays with the AOSP messages app for whatever reason.

Qksms seems to be reliable, though I’m not sure it’s very actively maintained. Other third party SMS apps could work better for you, though.

Kolanaki ,
@Kolanaki@yiffit.net avatar

I have the same problem sometimes talking to anyone in my family and we all use Android. It’s likely just the network itself having issues.

bionicjoey OP ,

I scrolled back in our conversation and found at least one instance of a text that seemed to be replying to something I’d said weirdly earlier, and that was on Thursday of last week. So it’s probably been going on at least that long.

TheGoldenGod ,
@TheGoldenGod@lemmy.world avatar

Have you tried resetting your network settings?

bionicjoey OP ,

Which network settings? Like my SIM card?

TheGoldenGod ,
@TheGoldenGod@lemmy.world avatar

No, this should explain how better.

wikihow.com/Reset-Network-Settings-on-Android

bionicjoey OP ,

What exactly will this do? Is it going to blow away anything important? The wikihow article doesn’t mention what gets reset.

TheGoldenGod ,
@TheGoldenGod@lemmy.world avatar

It resets network data to default, worst case it also deletes saved Wi-Fi passwords, that’s pretty much the only issue for me. But when things stop working with your network related device, this tends to fixes everything and it’s a simple place to start in my opinion.

bionicjoey OP ,

I’ll give it a shot.

TheGoldenGod ,
@TheGoldenGod@lemmy.world avatar

Hopefully this does the trick. 🤞

Omegabossman ,

This is almost certainly not the issue, but check and make sure the time/date is set automatically. I’ve seen the issue above before when someone’s phone is set manually and the 1 minute difference causes the texts to display weird.

bionicjoey OP , (edited )

Yeah no, I wouldn’t even know where to set the time on a smartphone. It’s definitely automatically synced from the internet (or mobile carrier, not actually sure where it gets its NTP from)

Edit: just found that setting, it was indeed already set to automatic. So that’s not the issue.

FelipeFelop ,
@FelipeFelop@discuss.online avatar

It could still be if your or their carrier/network time is wrong.

Also, I’m a little confused when you mentioned the little clock under the message. SMS doesn’t support read receipts. Some carriers support delivery receipts but these don’t work well across different message centres.

bionicjoey OP ,

Yeah I think they are delivery receipts, not read receipts. That’s my mistake. Anyway I know after some time it changes from the little clock to an actual timestamp. In the past nearly instantly but lately it could be like a minute before it changes.

FelipeFelop ,
@FelipeFelop@discuss.online avatar

That doesn’t sound like SMS delivery receipts. They are slow (that’s one of the reason Google developed RCS)

I think you are actually seeing the message sending animation.

Just tried it on an Android, yes little clock is the phone sending the message it then changes when the message has been sent.

The fact that it’s taking up to a minute to send the message tells me that the fault is at the message centre.

bionicjoey OP ,

By message center do you mean my mobile carrier?

FelipeFelop ,
@FelipeFelop@discuss.online avatar

SMS messages are sent through a message centre. It might be owned by your carrier or a third party. On Android in Messages if you look in settings under Advanced you’ll see SMSC followed by a phone number. That’s the number of the message centre your phone contacts to send an SMS

bionicjoey OP , (edited )

I see it. What can I do with this information? Should I call my carrier and let them know about a service problem?

FelipeFelop ,
@FelipeFelop@discuss.online avatar

The first thing to do is to check the message centre number is correct. You should be able to get this from your carrier’s website.

If it is then turn the phone off, leave for a few minutes. Turn it on. Wait a few minutes.

Send a fresh message to the one of the people you’ve been having problems with. Do not reply to one of their messages, it MUST be a fresh message (it’s technical but I’ll explain if you want.)

If that shows the error then call or contact your carrier explaining that text messages are taking too long to send and arriving late.

bionicjoey OP ,

So I may have done this a bit out of order, but I did actually try turning it off and on again yesterday, and tested afterward and the problem persisted. Not sure what you mean by a reply versus a fresh message though. And just now I checked the smsc and it matches what people say online it should be for my carrier (found an old Reddit thread).

FelipeFelop ,
@FelipeFelop@discuss.online avatar

It’s important you do it in the right order.

A fresh message is where you tap the New Conversation action button, enter the contacts name or number and then type the message (rather than open an existing chat)

So: Off, wait, on, wait, fresh message.

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