Android texting app

kartvelo

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Aug 12, 2003
10,454
At home
Hi there,
My wife has trouble sending texts. No, it's not that she doesn't want to or know how to; it often doesn't work. Her texts will be "sending" for hours and then sometimes go through, other times never go through after days. When she texts to groups, sometimes it will create a new identical group and send the text to that group; sometimes it will send only to some subset of the group. Other times her texts work just fine.

We thought it might have been because her phone was old and had no free storage, to the point that sometimes she had to delete an app here or there in order to save a document. But then we got her a new phone a few months ago - twice the storage, runs blazing fast. But her texting problems followed her to the new phone.

What should we be looking at to diagnose/fix this? It's an Android. She's just using the built in texting app.
 

glennhoffmania

meat puppet
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Jul 25, 2005
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I'm no tech support expert, but if the same weird thing is happening on both phones then logic suggests the cause has to be one of the common denominators. Those would be the user and her wireless signal. Sometimes if I text from my tablet, which is supposed to sync with my phone when they're on the same wifi, texts take a while and may fail. But I've never heard of that problem on a phone unless there is a signal or connection issue.
 

Marceline

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Sep 9, 2002
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Canton, MA
Group texts over SMS/MMS work like crap. Those kinds of problems happen to pretty much everyone.

People that are 100% in iPhone groups use iMessage and therefore don't have this issue. Any mixed group of iPhone/Android and this stuff is very common.

The best solution is to use something like Signal. It provides proof of delivery, it's secure, much more reliable, and works for group texts. And can be used by groups including both Android and iPhone.
 

TallerThanPedroia

Civilly Disobedient
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Jul 19, 2005
25,457
Boston
Group texts over SMS/MMS work like crap. Those kinds of problems happen to pretty much everyone.

People that are 100% in iPhone groups use iMessage and therefore don't have this issue. Any mixed group of iPhone/Android and this stuff is very common.

The best solution is to use something like Signal. It provides proof of delivery, it's secure, much more reliable, and works for group texts. And can be used by groups including both Android and iPhone.
My wife (iPhone) has started sending me (Android) videos through WhatsApp instead of trying to text them to me, since they come out looking like a 2005 YouTube video otherwise.

And yeah, being on a group with iPhone users is ridiculous. But I'm not going to get everyone onto an app.
 

Marceline

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Sep 9, 2002
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Canton, MA
My wife (iPhone) has started sending me (Android) videos through WhatsApp instead of trying to text them to me, since they come out looking like a 2005 YouTube video otherwise.

And yeah, being on a group with iPhone users is ridiculous. But I'm not going to get everyone onto an app.
I have seen a surprising number of non-techie people I associate with start using Signal within the last couple months or so. It seems like it is actually starting to catch on.

I feel like most people are just sick of all the technical issues involved with group texts outside of iMessage, so they're willing to give it a shot.
 

Bigpupp

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Jun 8, 2008
2,381
New Mexico
Different Androids use different messaging apps, so that phone might not have this option, but you might try turning off "Chat Features" to see if that helps. Inside the app you can find it by going Settings>Chat Features and uncheck the button next to "Chat Features."

One thing I noticed with my messaging app is that there is a problem with sending messages through a PC using the Device Pairing feature. I used that feature every day but stopped when I had the same problems you're describing. Haven't had the problem since.
 
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