Heads up, I love iOS and Android, I think both OS provide excellent features to suite their respective users. With that said, he's my deal breaker as to why I may be returning my S6 within my 14 day return policy to go back to my iPhone 6 Plus.
1. MMS: Now with iOS you get Apple's proprietary iMessage which does not limit the quality of the picture you are sending out, it does however, limit the length of the video though but not the quality. The problem with Android is that it does limit the quality based on your carriers send size limit which in this case for me is 1mb per AT&T. I just couldn't believe it, it wasn't something I was aware of due to the fact that I've been with iOS for a few years now but when I attempted to send numerous pictures I had just taken with my brand spanking new S6 via Textra (Msg App), it kept throwing errors indicating it was out of memory or the file was too large! I was really disappointed to say the least, I mean damn I could send numerous .GIF images just fine via iMessage and can't even do that with the stock SMS app or with Textra - what gives?
2. Group Messaging: I text a lot, I also have quite a few group messages going during any given day at a time and to me group messaging is a big reason why I loved iOS + iMessage. To this day, I just can't comprehend how Google hasn't been able to come up with a solution to oppose iMessage.... It really baffles me... Everyone has their preferences when it comes to phones and OS, not everyone will be on an Android device nor will everyone be on an iPhone. I didn't think this would bother me as much but it is, now if this isn't a big deal to you then that's fine, again this is my preference and my personal opinion but how in the world are we in year 2015 and Android still can't get group messaging right is beyond me.
Any help would be greatly appreciated, again I'm not bashing the S6 or Android, I was just unaware that these were still issues after all these years.
Thanks!
When you open your messaging app go into the settings and try to see if you have to enable group messaging.
Anyone else have this issue? Ive tried everything and I just cant recieve group texts, everyone gets mine but I cant get theirs. This happens on all messaging apps.
This issue only cropped up a week ago for me
Any solutions yet?!
I've recently gone to the S6 from iPhone. I've de-registered my number from the imessage app on apple's website, turned off imessage and facetime on my old iPhone, downloaded textra and numerous other messaging apps, and I still cant send or receive group messages to/from other iphones! When I send a group message, the text goes to the receivers individually. When they text me into a group message I don't receive anything.
Please any help or suggestions?!
thannan said:
Any solutions yet?!
I've recently gone to the S6 from iPhone. I've de-registered my number from the imessage app on apple's website, turned off imessage and facetime on my old iPhone, downloaded textra and numerous other messaging apps, and I still cant send or receive group messages to/from other iphones! When I send a group message, the text goes to the receivers individually. When they text me into a group message I don't receive anything.
Please any help or suggestions?!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I had some issues with MMS messages (including group messages) and a Sprint rep had me go into Settings->System Update->Update Profile and it fixed it. Give that a try.
As for your group messages going out as individual messages, this is typically an app settings. Group messages are MMS and send over mobile data, not over cellular like SMS (I might be using the wrong terms there). Most apps don't presume to use up your precious data and will instead send a group message as multiple SMS messages (using up your SMS quota rather than your data quota).
I just checked both Google Hangouts and Chomp SMS that I have on my phone, and both have a checkbox in their settings for something like "Use MMS for Group Messages."
flu13 said:
I had some issues with MMS messages (including group messages) and a Sprint rep had me go into Settings->System Update->Update Profile and it fixed it. Give that a try.
As for your group messages going out as individual messages, this is typically an app settings. Group messages are MMS and send over mobile data, not over cellular like SMS (I might be using the wrong terms there). Most apps don't presume to use up your precious data and will instead send a group message as multiple SMS messages (using up your SMS quota rather than your data quota).
I just checked both Google Hangouts and Chomp SMS that I have on my phone, and both have a checkbox in their settings for something like "Use MMS for Group Messages."
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't appear to have the "update profile" setting anywhere on my S6?
But I do have the MMS for group chat activated on my app.. :/
Any other suggestions?
Or can android simply not group chat with iphones?
Thanks for replying though!
thannan said:
I don't appear to have the "update profile" setting anywhere on my S6?
But I do have the MMS for group chat activated on my app.. :/
Any other suggestions?
Or can android simply not group chat with iphones?
Thanks for replying though!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I believe the problem is that iChat is a proprietary (closed) group messaging system.
Related
Hello,
Just had a question. I sometimes receive "group mms" messages from friends with iphones who are on AT&T (i'm on verizon with a DX). It seems like the list of recipients isn't being sent along with the MMS. So it looks like a message that's directed at me, and not at a group of people. Also, this makes it difficult to respond to everyone that was on the original list for the message. Not to mention the fact that the individual replies from other people go into the list of text's between that person and I, and not into one viewable group conversation. I had this problem with an old feature-phone that i had as well, but just chalked that up to bad software. I've been searching here, on howardforums, and other places, but no one seems to know much about it. Has anyone else seen this, and is there anything that i can do about it?
Thanks in advance!
Hey djuniah,
I understand what you are saying. I have been having the same problem too. These are automated msg's sent out by the service providers.
I reckon, you contact your network provider and look into the processes. I did that when this problem was occurring and it was rectified.
Now, its no guarantee that you wont get another msg like it... but the network provider does his/her best to rectify it..
Hope this helps.
err, i don't think you understand what i mean. I'm talking about this scenario
Friend1 (with iphone on AT&T) -> Sends group mms to "Friend2, Friend3, and me"
Friend2 (with iphone on AT&T) -> Sees the message with all of the other people's names attached. When they reply, it goes to everyone in the group mms
me (droid x on verizon) -> I see the original message from friend1 in the same thread as all of my previous messages with friend1. When friend2 sent their reply, i see that message in the thread with all of my previous messages from friend2. When i want to reply, i have to reply to each of them individually, not as a group.
I called vzw and the operator there said he saw the same issue on his OG droid. I've assumed this was a network issue for a while now, but i was wondering if anyone had any solid info as to why it was happening and if there was anything we could do about it.
bump to top
This isn't network trickery, as far as I can see. It's Apple intelligently using the features built into MMS long ago to send a group message, have other iPhones handle that group message in a way that you can 'reply to all' like email.
Someone (Google, Go SMS, HandCent) needs to simply build the 'group' feature into their application so that it can properly see the recipients of the MMS as a Group and reply to all. If I go into the message details of one of these MMS messages on my Evo, I can see everyone that got the message... Now, the app just needs to look at that and do something with it.
It's very similar to Beluga... albeit not as functional.
Yeah, i had come to a similar conclusion once i started looking at the message details. If most of those texting apps can handle sending group messages, i don't see why they havent/cant build the ability to notice them coming in...
seems like a really simple and practical thing to have
Any luck with this issue>?
djuniah said:
Hello,
Just had a question. I sometimes receive "group mms" messages from friends with iphones who are on AT&T (i'm on verizon with a DX). It seems like the list of recipients isn't being sent along with the MMS. So it looks like a message that's directed at me, and not at a group of people. Also, this makes it difficult to respond to everyone that was on the original list for the message. Not to mention the fact that the individual replies from other people go into the list of text's between that person and I, and not into one viewable group conversation.
Has anyone else seen this, and is there anything that i can do about it?
Thanks in advance!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Any luck with this issue? I noticed it works for BB users also. I have iPhone users, BB users, and EVO (Android) users on a Group MMS chat and it seems that only us Androids are not able to reply to the "Group". We can create a group on our end and batch text each user, but the messages are not received in their "group mms" screen, its on a direct individual one. Need to figure this one out so I can continue my "My phone is better than yours" war with my iPhone friends. Heheh.
bump this back up, i just got into this issue a few days ago, if i cant me sms agent to iphone in handcent would that do anything for me
bump
this is a growing problem for me, and for Android i fear...
of my closest 20 friends, 18 of us use Android, 1 blackberry, the rest iPhone... and the group SMS (really MMS) messages are common - PLUS - the one BB user can reply to all with their device. granted the BB reply looks like email the way it contains the whole message with headers in its reply, but still it can play the game.
i find it really surprising that simply threading the messages that come in to multiple recipients hasn't been addressed, and if i had the technical skill i would address it myself.
i am currently on an Atrix using Cyanogen's beta, and have an Inspire running the 7.1 RC.... i have tried both the native SMS/MMS apps, Handscent (though not recently) and love GOSMS Pro (though it seems to periodically send out duplicate texts for some reason).
i would love to find a way to thread my SMS/MMS messages with groups like the iPhone does so i can join these conversations instead of receiving any number of random replies from people and having to piece together the conversation. ANY help with this would be appreciated.
installing the vzw messenger app DID "solve" the problem for me. I prefer to use GOSMS Pro, but when i get a group message, i reply to it with the verizon one. However, now i get double the notifications from GOSMS. For some reason, it's pop-up thinks i got 2 messages instead of one (with the same content). This is far from ideal, but it does work.
what about outside of VZW?
i wish there was an app i could get my hands on like your VZW app, maybe its not perfect, but it gets you through the issue until something better comes along. being on the Atrix and the Inspire i'm with AT&T coming off an iPhone, and periodically having to go back if there's reason for me to play a role in some happening which is causing an unusually high number of group texts.
from what i can tell, Handscent and GOSMS Pro are really the only contenders in the platform-wide SMS/MMS alternatives, I'm surprised they've spent so much time focused on making their themes pretty instead of addressing this well documented but unaddressed issue.
has anyone else found other alternatives?
Bump
I've been looking for this for a year. Today an iPhone user asked me why is that we cannot reply to group messages. She's anoyed because she have to forward all the messages received from Androids to the rest of the group...
Does anyone know of any mod or ROM that will properly support group MMS in android as it is properly support on iPhone, WP7, and BlackBerry?
On the HTC One X the messages arrive properly but when I send a reply, it gets sent as an individual SMS. Interestingly, if I attach an image (thus forcing it to convert to MMS), it will reply-all correctly.
So I guess .... something has to be modified so that the OS knows to send as MMS (with text only) when responding to a group
Use goSMSPro or Handcent. Need to enable it in both.
jiggytom said:
Use goSMSPro or Handcent. Need to enable it in both.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I appreciate the suggestion. I dont want to put words int eh OPs mouth, but I think they were referring to a way to mod or update native software so that the native messages app works properly with MMS. for many people, using a 3rd party app for messaging is not preferable.
that said, there are threads running around XDA regarding installing the stock ICS messaging app. perhaps that would work properly with group messaging on HOX (I would assume but haven't tried).
The stock app doesn't work with group messaging either, to my knowledge but someone can correct me if I am wrong.
Moto BLUR software has this implemented in their messaging app. Don't think its that easy of a thing to do.
Basically the messages come in as MMS and they are grouped together by the software.
This is the worst if you came from an iPhone and have a lot of friends with iPhones. I get group texts daily so I had to download Go SMS. After enabling group texting in Go SMS the group messages are shown properly in the stock HTC messaging app, but I still need to use Go if I want to reply to the group texts.
Gtg you have a one x to? Awesome this is a good thing
Sent from my HTC One X using xda premium
I've also been wondering this too.. I just installed Go SMS Pro but I still can't seem to get it to function like the iPhone would where its all in one conversation sort of like an online chat room. Hmmm anyone else have any tips?
edit: all working smooth now so happy.
jiggytom said:
The stock app doesn't work with group messaging either, to my knowledge but someone can correct me if I am wrong.
Moto BLUR software has this implemented in their messaging app. Don't think its that easy of a thing to do.
Basically the messages come in as MMS and they are grouped together by the software.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is good to know, thanks. So this issue seems to be isolated as a flaw in ICS, then, correct?
fitchpuckman said:
This is good to know, thanks. So this issue seems to be isolated as a flaw in ICS, then, correct?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I wouldn't say its a "flaw", its just an unimplemented feature. Not sure why they never took the time to do it, it's pretty popular.
jiggytom said:
I wouldn't say its a "flaw", its just an unimplemented feature. Not sure why they never took the time to do it, it's pretty popular.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Oh okay, thanks. I wasn't sure if it was a bug or just not developed. Seems very odd that they didnt implement group MMS.
gtg465x said:
This is the worst if you came from an iPhone and have a lot of friends with iPhones. I get group texts daily so I had to download Go SMS. After enabling group texting in Go SMS the group messages are shown properly in the stock HTC messaging app, but I still need to use Go if I want to reply to the group texts.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Exactly this.
GoSMS is ok but is rather ugly, and crash-happy. What will happen is that a group message comes in, then gosms groups it into the threaded convo so I get 2 notifications for every 1 message. It's rather annoying. Handcent is even uglier.
I share your frustrations. I have tried ChompSMS since I used BiteSMS on the iPhone and it doesn't support MMS. I tried Handcent and the UI is cartoonish and it doesn't display contact photos correctly. The HTC messages app allows me to send a group MMS, but then I get individual replies back and it doesn't maintain the group.
Using at&ts message app and it does group txt, but you can't start one. It has to be sent to you first and from there it'll always reply to group
Sent from my HTC One X using XDA
gnabgibeht said:
Using at&ts message app and it does group txt, but you can't start one. It has to be sent to you first and from there it'll always reply to group
Sent from my HTC One X using XDA
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The att messages app also butchers picture quality through mms. Send yourself one and see.
mochzr said:
Interestingly, if I attach an image (thus forcing it to convert to MMS), it will reply-all correctly.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
this. it's gotta be here. I hope the modders can figure a way of getting the phone to reply with an mms message, attachment free, when the message is sent within a group thread.
Bumping this thread.... anyway for a mod or an app that can force a text-only message to MMS when there are multiple recipients?? that's all I need :X
developer support requested
This would be PERFECT, especially if this pref could be added to stock SMS/MMS application. No need for Handcent or GoSMS, which are both ugly and unwieldy, IMHO.
mochzr said:
Bumping this thread.... anyway for a mod or an app that can force a text-only message to MMS when there are multiple recipients?? that's all I need :X
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
GO SMS group messages
GO SMS groups text messages like the iPhone does
Settings, Send settings, enable group MMS
dollypatel07 said:
GO SMS groups text messages like the iPhone does
Settings, Send settings, enable group MMS
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
GO SMS will slow down to a snail's pace if you have consecutive group texts coming in (which happens frequently as people are using it to converse).
It's slow, it's rather ugly, AND it gives you TWO notifications for every one group text. It's seriously terrible. WP7, WP8, BlackBerry, iPhone, all properly support Group MMS. Even some featurephones do it correctly as well.
I swear this has to be some kind of crazy oversight from Google or some kind of weird political war where no one will address such a simple issue. I mean if Verizon and AT&T can make an app that corrects this, then what gives??
Native SMS retarded -- google wake up!
mochzr said:
GO SMS will slow down to a snail's pace if you have consecutive group texts coming in (which happens frequently as people are using it to converse).
It's slow, it's rather ugly, AND it gives you TWO notifications for every one group text. It's seriously terrible. WP7, WP8, BlackBerry, iPhone, all properly support Group MMS. Even some featurephones do it correctly as well.
I swear this has to be some kind of crazy oversight from Google or some kind of weird political war where no one will address such a simple issue. I mean if Verizon and AT&T can make an app that corrects this, then what gives??
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
GO SMS is a NO GO as the OP has said. I agree Google is slacking here, or there has to be something else.
Is the raw code unavailable to developers to recompile and change the native text messaging application and it's MMS settings?
Hey there,
If I send a message that is too long (like it breaks up into 2 messages after the 1st messages character limit is exceeded), the message will not send. I am using a 3rd party, 8sms, because I don't like utilizing Hangouts as my SMS and chat.
I'm sure they will blame it on me using the 3rd party app, because thats what they did last time I had a problem (not related to this)
Anyone else having this problem? Is it Nexus 5 wide, or just Sprint?
Thank you so much.
gsteelx said:
Hey there,
If I send a message that is too long (like it breaks up into 2 messages after the 1st messages character limit is exceeded), the message will not send. I am using a 3rd party, 8sms, because I don't like utilizing Hangouts as my SMS and chat.
I'm sure they will blame it on me using the 3rd party app, because thats what they did last time I had a problem (not related to this)
Anyone else having this problem? Is it Nexus 5 wide, or just Sprint?
Thank you so much.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It is doing the same thing when I switch it to Hangouts.
Sprint rep not very helpful. Did a bunch of phone resetting, changing the MSID, etc... to no avail.
gsteelx said:
Hey there,
If I send a message that is too long (like it breaks up into 2 messages after the 1st messages character limit is exceeded), the message will not send. I am using a 3rd party, 8sms, because I don't like utilizing Hangouts as my SMS and chat.
I'm sure they will blame it on me using the 3rd party app, because thats what they did last time I had a problem (not related to this)
Anyone else having this problem? Is it Nexus 5 wide, or just Sprint?
Thank you so much.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I haven't tried any third-party SMS apps yet because I'm mostly happy with Hangouts, but it really annoys me that I can't even send a text with more than 160 characters. On previous phones, you could set up the messaging app to let you type to your heart's content and have the app automatically split the message up into 160-character texts. In Hangouts, it actually won't let you type more than 160 characters. You have to send the text and then start another one. There's no way that I can find to change this.
maxpower7 said:
I haven't tried any third-party SMS apps yet because I'm mostly happy with Hangouts, but it really annoys me that I can't even send a text with more than 160 characters. On previous phones, you could set up the messaging app to let you type to your heart's content and have the app automatically split the message up into 160-character texts. In Hangouts, it actually won't let you type more than 160 characters. You have to send the text and then start another one. There's no way that I can find to change this.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, that is what I meant by it not allowing me to do it on Hangouts either. It is truly annoying as ****. 8SMS is really just like the old messaging that we used to have before these updates. I am overall happy with it, just not with not being able to send a message over 160 characters, because it fails.
Does anyone else have a 3rd party SMS app that they like? I tried another one in the Play Store, but it had heaps of ads pop up after sending a text message... I gave that the swift delete quick!
Thanks for everyones help. This forum rocks!
I tried an app called Textra, just to see if it was 8SMS causing the problem.
Textra did the same thing...
I figured out the problem of why it wouldn't send text messages over 160 characters in 8SMS.
In the older versions of Android, on the messenger, it would automatically change the over 160 SMS to an MMS, and you could keep typing. By default, in 8SMS, this wasn't enabled. I had to enable it in settings.
Problem fixed.
Hopefully anyone who uses 8SMS will find this post. I highly recommend this app. I am not a fan of hangouts for SMS.
This is standard for SMS, some phones trick you into thinking there is no limit by not showing you the count or the limit and automatically combining everything or converting the SMS into another protocol (like imessage)
More info here:
http://www.wirelessdevnet.com/channels/sms/features/sms.html
Specifically from the site:
"The messages are limited by size. An SMS message can’t exceed 160 characters. (BTW this limitation is due to the limitation in the MAP protocol in GSM) In case of longer e-mails or information service messages like news, the messages need to broken down into more than one message. The need to break the messages into several smaller segments could make SMS comparatively costlier in comparison to GPRS (for the same kind of service). Also, This doesn’t look very appealing on a mobile device!
However
MMS (talked about later) would remove the limitation of small messages"
Personally I think in the year 2013/2014 and the technologies we have I'm sure it is possible to change this limitation by introducing a new SMS method or protocol/etc but that requires someone to actually spend the time and money to introduce a new standard that replaces one that has been in place for a very long time
I was having the same issue. There are two options to get long text messages to work on Sprint. I'm also using 8sms (great messaging app, really recommend it over Hangouts).
The first, like someone else stated, is to select the option to convert long messages to picture messages. Make sure you select anything over 1 message long to be converted.
The second option that I discovered is to enable "split counter" in the settings. This will split the texts and send them as consecutives SMS messages without converting them to MMS messages. Hope this helps.
I have searched but not been able to find any similar to my issue. I have a GS3 my mom has a GS4 and my dad has a droid HD and my sisters have iphone 5s. If we try to group text each other my mom and dads text show up in their own threads. My sisters show up together in a group thread. If I reply to a group thread it goes to all people in the group and all the messages show up as MMS. I am stumped. This has been going on since I got my phone and moved it to AOSP based roms going back to like slim 2. I am currently on the latest stable release of slim. I have personally truned on group text on my parents phones just to make sure they actually have it on. I have also had this issue with the stock apk as well as when i tried to use hangouts new sms feature. Any ideas?
I'm assuming you have "Group messaging" checked in the settings of all the messaging apps you use? The one that says "Use MMS to send a single message when there are multiple recipients"
BattsNotIncld said:
I'm assuming you have "Group messaging" checked in the settings of all the messaging apps you use? The one that says "Use MMS to send a single message when there are multiple recipients"
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Of course, I should have mentioned that.
I was invited into a group chat with 3 other Verizon users, we all have Android phones - but they all use the official (God awful) Verizon Message+ app and I'm using Pixel's default (Google) texting app, which I really like so far. Problem is... When I first was invited into the group text, it worked - kind of. I got text messages and stuff, but instead of replacing the phone numbers that prefixed the messages, it'd just show the phone numbers.
So I asked them what they used, and downloaded the Verizon texting app and switched to that - I could see avatars, the background picture, it read my contact info for each user correctly, etc.. But the app is terrible, I mean a truly god awful piece of garbage - you can't even save images to your phone, just to "Verizon".
Anyways, rant aside - I switched back to Google's texting app and now I'm not getting any messages in the group text - and I asked in person, they're still sending messages, they're just not coming through for me.
So my main question is: How do I fix not receiving group texts anymore? I tried deleting cache + data for the google texting app like I saw being recommended, but that didn't fix it. I really don't want to switch back to the Verizon message+ app if I can help it because it really is terrible.
Any help would be appreciated. I'd even accept another texting app suggestion if it has feature parity with the google app, I just want to do everything I can to avoid Verizon's app.
Jogee said:
I was invited into a group chat with 3 other Verizon users, we all have Android phones - but they all use the official (God awful) Verizon Message+ app and I'm using Pixel's default (Google) texting app, which I really like so far. Problem is... When I first was invited into the group text, it worked - kind of. I got text messages and stuff, but instead of replacing the phone numbers that prefixed the messages, it'd just show the phone numbers.
So I asked them what they used, and downloaded the Verizon texting app and switched to that - I could see avatars, the background picture, it read my contact info for each user correctly, etc.. But the app is terrible, I mean a truly god awful piece of garbage - you can't even save images to your phone, just to "Verizon".
Anyways, rant aside - I switched back to Google's texting app and now I'm not getting any messages in the group text - and I asked in person, they're still sending messages, they're just not coming through for me.
So my main question is: How do I fix not receiving group texts anymore? I tried deleting cache + data for the google texting app like I saw being recommended, but that didn't fix it. I really don't want to switch back to the Verizon message+ app if I can help it because it really is terrible.
Any help would be appreciated. I'd even accept another texting app suggestion if it has feature parity with the google app, I just want to do everything I can to avoid Verizon's app.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Does your device have a "dual messenger" option anywhere in your system settings?
Sent from my SM-S767VL using Tapatalk
No promises, but you might try Textra. I think the problem come from Verizon's app can send over Wi-Fi (desktop apps) and is not really sms compliant.
Thank you both, but sadly no option for dual messaging and I've used Textra and wasn't a huge fan. As awful as the Verizon app is, I may just have to keep using it ?