Database Users

Messaging app is completely terrible

I purchased an evo for both me and my wife. A friend of mine did the same as well. It seemed like a good deal at the time and the phone seems to be good quality overall...
However, when messaging back and forth quickly, messages disappear from the thread and cannot be seen in any way. All that I receive is a notification. This has happened for all of us. Messages are also often received in the wrong order.
Would the situation be any better if I was using plain android instead of the buggy sense UI? It looks like the froyo rom is making good progress.. I'm going to try it, but if it's still as buggy as it is stock, Sprint will be getting 4 EVOs returned.

Try another messaging app like handcent or chomp. You have choices.

No problems here, and I'm on my 2nd Android phone. Both have worked great with no problems such as yours.

Seems like more of a rant then a request for help. that being said, my family has 5 Evo's between us and we have had not one complaint with the SMS. possibly sprint service in the area? i know when i'm in smaller towns the sms seems to lag, almost like its stuck in queue somewhere before being sent to me.
good luck mate!

Use Handcent. Problem solved. The stock app is slow and sucks.

If you hate it, go back to the iPhone where you obviously came from?
Now to try to find a question to answer within all that complaining....... hmmm... oh yes, I'm having issues with the SMS coming in odd orders occasionally. I did not ever experience this with my Hero.
So what I can derive from that is that this particular release of Sense, which is NOT Android, has a bug. You need to differentiate between the OS and the VERY deep reaching Sense UI that HTC puts on top.
I'd tell you to wait for the ROM development to pick up, but something tells me you're not a tinkerer. The iPhone is a fantastic phone.. you just can't tinker as much as you can with Android. So with Android you'll have choices but you'll have bugs. It's just something I come to expect.
It's like running Linux. Sure it's trendy to hate Microsoft, but holy hell there are a lot of problems with Linux apps in design, UI, and in general stability (Note, I didn't say Linux has problems.. I said apps. Because it's the crap on top of the underlying system I have complaints with). I still love it, I just have to approach it with an attitude that it's not going to be as polished as OS X, and it's not going to be as stable either.
Welcome to Open Source and the stuff people put out with it.

After hearing everyone praise handcent I decided to give it a try myself and wow is it better. Choice is very nice
Sent from my EVO using Tapatalk

Edited to remove ranting, I'll give handcent a shot. Hopefully it doesn't lose random messages =(.

I've gotten some messages out of order, but that's about it.
If I try Handcent and somehow don't like it, is it easy to revert back to the original built-in messaging app?

pekosROB said:
I've gotten some messages out of order, but that's about it.
If I try Handcent and somehow don't like it, is it easy to revert back to the original built-in messaging app?
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Nevermind I realize it's an independent app. I just replaced my Messaging icon with the Handcent one on the homescreen.

BTW, anyone using handcent have a problem sending MMS?

pekosROB said:
Nevermind I realize it's an independent app. I just replaced my Messaging icon with the Handcent one on the homescreen.
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Just make sure you disable notifications in the stock app so you don't get double notifications. That's annoying.
Also, I haven't had any problems with MMS while using Handcent.

afazel said:
Just make sure you disable notifications in the stock app so you don't get double notifications. That's annoying.
Also, I haven't had any problems with MMS while using Handcent.
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Thanks, I totally noticed that too. But it looks like if I disable notifications in the notification bar then it doesn't let me make sure it plays a sound.
Does handcent control that on its own so it doesn't matter if the sound is disabled on the stock messaging app?

pekosROB said:
Thanks, I totally noticed that too. But it looks like if I disable notifications in the notification bar then it doesn't let me make sure it plays a sound.
Does handcent control that on its own so it doesn't matter if the sound is disabled on the stock messaging app?
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Handcent has its own notification settings.

Jye75 said:
Handcent has its own notification settings.
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Thanks, I turned off the messaging app notification and it still notified me when I got a text.

donatom3 said:
BTW, anyone using handcent have a problem sending MMS?
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Yea I have that problem alot I usually use built in messaging for MMS and handcent for all other SMS. I never have a problem receiving MMS with handcent just sending.

I prefer chomp, and have had no issues. well maybe one, or two texts out of order. Like if the sender typed a "two page" text and sent, then sent a short text the short one might come in before the second half of the "two page" text.

roybotnik said:
I purchased an evo for both me and my wife. A friend of mine did the same as well. It seemed like a good deal at the time and the phone seems to be good quality overall...
However, when messaging back and forth quickly, messages disappear from the thread and cannot be seen in any way. All that I receive is a notification. This has happened for all of us. Messages are also often received in the wrong order.
Would the situation be any better if I was using plain android instead of the buggy sense UI? It looks like the froyo rom is making good progress.. I'm going to try it, but if it's still as buggy as it is stock, Sprint will be getting 4 EVOs returned.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
that doesn't happen with my sms app but it does happen with my google mail from time to time.

prestonr83 said:
Yea I have that problem alot I usually use built in messaging for MMS and handcent for all other SMS. I never have a problem receiving MMS with handcent just sending.
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I ran some tests and I can send over 3g it's only when wifi is enabled. So I did some research and found out sprint only sends MMS over their connections. The default messaging app will bypass wifi and use 3g to send mms. Handcent had patched this for the Hero.

I'd like to put in a plug for ChompSMS. I hadn't used it before, but people were saying that it automatically resizes your pictures when sending MMS. Maybe this isn't a problem on the Evo, but it was on the Hero. I will occasionally get a text out of order if someone sends me a long one that is broken up into more than 2 messages. But, I really like it's interface better than Handcent, which I have also used. As far as I know, I have never had a text go missing when using Chomp.
Android is all about choice. It's really nice to have all these choices and these are FREE (as in beer).

Alternative SMS App

Anyone use any app for sending/receiving sms, other than stock, GoSMS, Handcent or Chomp?
I don't like the stock because customising is very limited. GoSMS always conflicts with the stock app for me, even if I turn off notifications in stock the LED doesn't flash. Handcent is okay but is missing something, though I can't put my finger on what. Chomp is ok but the advertising and spam sms p!55 me off.
Any other apps available that you'd recommend?

Chomp is great
It only gives an intro sms on first install. Also i bought it(they don't use paypal anymore) so i don't worry about ads.(of course there are other ways to get rid of those, but we don't talk about that on here)

Have you tried Pansi SMS. I havent actually used it but looks decent enough.
Market Link

wachadoing said:
Have you tried Pansi SMS. I havent actually used it but looks decent enough.
Market Link
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Looks and feels like a rip-off of GoSMS. Even the screenshots on the market are similar

for me gosms is the best, because you can customize virtually everything and they add new features all the time. great customer support btw
i dont have any problems with stock sms interfering with gosms

Can also recommend go sms.

[Q] Group MMS via stock SMS app issues

So I've got a few friends who use iPhones as well as Android phones and they like to all talk via group text. I wasn't a huge fan myself but I've finally decided to go this route and it's growing on me.
Now here is the issue. When I'm sending one on one to anyone, I've never had a single problem in my house. Service is decent (2-3 bars) but again, no problems. When I'm doing group text (converted to MMS), many times it will just sit there with the little blue circle going round and round. Sometimes it will go through, other times (about 20%) it won't. I've got reception the entire time... but it just sits there doing nothing. Usually I end up copying the text (no attachments either btw), delete the message, then paste and re-send and then voila! - it works.
Any ideas what might be going on? As you can see in my sig, I'm only rooted with CWM, that's it. Is there maybe a better SMS app that would work better with this type of heavy use? I had GO SMS for a bit but honestly I'm not a fan anymore.
Also, is there maybe a way to NOT keep converting every message to MMS because I'm thinking that clearly is part of the issue here. Would love to just keep them as SMS but I fear that group messaging simply won't function that way.

Kadin said:
So I've got a few friends who use iPhones as well as Android phones and they like to all talk via group text. I wasn't a huge fan myself but I've finally decided to go this route and it's growing on me.
Now here is the issue. When I'm sending one on one to anyone, I've never had a single problem in my house. Service is decent (2-3 bars) but again, no problems. When I'm doing group text (converted to MMS), many times it will just sit there with the little blue circle going round and round. Sometimes it will go through, other times (about 20%) it won't. I've got reception the entire time... but it just sits there doing nothing. Usually I end up copying the text (no attachments either btw), delete the message, then paste and re-send and then voila! - it works.
Any ideas what might be going on? As you can see in my sig, I'm only rooted with CWM, that's it. Is there maybe a better SMS app that would work better with this type of heavy use? I had GO SMS for a bit but honestly I'm not a fan anymore.
Also, is there maybe a way to NOT keep converting every message to MMS because I'm thinking that clearly is part of the issue here. Would love to just keep them as SMS but I fear that group messaging simply won't function that way.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Have you taken the OTA? I'm just wondering as the stock app works great for me. Go sucks because of all the add ons they added last year.
No, because Group MMS is an MMS. It is not an SMS.

Stock rom for me in the texting app was always slow to me and I had issues... I also do HEAVY group chats (2 or 3 groups) throughout the day. Best I found so far is the AOSP Messaging app. (SMS app included in CM10.1 and all AOSP Roms). Theres a port of it for Touchwiz but it doesn't work right when receiving group text from iPhone currently for some reason.

thacounty said:
Have you taken the OTA? I'm just wondering as the stock app works great for me. Go sucks because of all the add ons they added last year.
No, because Group MMS is an MMS. It is not an SMS.
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Yeah I just got my phone last week and it had the latest software on it. And yeah I kinda figured about the MMS, thanks!
WoodburyMan said:
Stock rom for me in the texting app was always slow to me and I had issues... I also do HEAVY group chats (2 or 3 groups) throughout the day. Best I found so far is the AOSP Messaging app. (SMS app included in CM10.1 and all AOSP Roms). Theres a port of it for Touchwiz but it doesn't work right when receiving group text from iPhone currently for some reason.
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hmmm... I'll keep digging around.
Thanks guys!

iPhone MMS not appearing on Messages but they show fine on Google Hangouts... WTH?!?

This one has me scratching my head looking for answers. I noticed this problem a while ago where my friends MMS sent from iPhones were not appearing on my Messages, I have the option for "fetch MMS automatically" and all I get is the little cloud but its blank, it only shows the time it was received, I've also tried disabling the fetch MMS automatically and even when downloading them it shows me the blank cloud. The doozy comes when I tried using Hangouts just to see what it was and to my surprise I could see all my SMS and MMS conversations from my contacts and all the pictures from the iPhone contacts were shown via Hangouts but they do not show on the stock Messages app.
Things I've tried:
1) Googling for answers only resulted in fanboyism comments and speculations that led to more fanboyism.
2) At first I tried contacting my carrier and they made me reset the APN settings to default, which I did and it was after that that I realized that it was only the iPhone MMS messages that weren't being received.
3) Tried disabling the Hangouts services via the Apps option on the settings menu. Restarted phone and still wouldn't work.
4) Been restarting my phone with each setting I change to see if it helps but no.
5) Been bugging my friends to send me MMS from their iPhones and one did get through but nothing more after that.
6) Made sure their iPhones had the setting of "Send MMS when iChat isn't available" enabled.
7) Made sure my old iPhone account was signed out of my old iPhone 4 so I wasn't receiving anymore iMessages.
I'm speculating that I either need to call my carrier again which is Claro PR and explain the situation to see if it helps, or maybe go to a store. Also, I've been thinking about Rooting my phone so I can uninstall some of the bloat, which included Hangouts but don't want to go down that path yet and I don't know if it would really help anything since I already tried disabling the service via the Apps options.
Please help me figure this out, I love this phone but this thing is bugging the hell out of me.

I have had problems with mms on hangouts and the stock app on Sprint doesn't support group mms. I have been using Go sms pro and everything works fine, including iPhone mms messages.
Hope that helps.
Sent from my Sprint LG G2.

p2cactus said:
I have had problems with mms on hangouts and the stock app on Sprint doesn't support group mms. I have been using Go sms pro and everything works fine, including iPhone mms messages.
Hope that helps.
Sent from my Sprint LG G2.
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Hmm... interesting a replacement messaging app, I would definitely keep this in mind so thanks a lot for the suggestion. I rather use the stock apps while I'm getting used to the phone since this is my first Android device but will definitely use this if resetting to factory defaults doesn't help my problem.
*Edit*
Any other suggestions for my problem are welcomed.

LG didn't enable MMS group messaging on stock messages. My HTC One and S4 had the option in settings to enable it...LG left it out. If you haven't heard, TEXTRA is one of the best, fastest, light weight messaging apps that can handle iPhone group messages without the bloat on go sms and handcent. Look it up on the playstore...ratings are great and all my Android friends use it now. I've yet ran into any issues with group texting.
Sent from my JEE TWO

SKyRocKeting727 said:
LG didn't enable MMS group messaging on stock messages. My HTC One and S4 had the option in settings to enable it...LG left it out. If you haven't heard, TEXTRA is one of the best, fastest, light weight messaging apps that can handle iPhone group messages without the bloat on go sms and handcent. Look it up on the playstore...ratings are great and all my Android friends use it now. I've yet ran into any issues with group texting.
Sent from my JEE TWO
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Hi and thanks for the reply, I've looked up Textra and seems like a nice alternative and has a very clean interface, I'm currently using Hangouts from Google without a problem but would have preferred the stock message app. It's weird because I went to my carrier and they did some test and everything was fine, turns out its only MMS sent from iPhones that won't show through the Message app from G2. Maybe I should try emailing them to see if I can get some answers?

Yea only the Verizon variant supports group messages. I posted a thread about this in the Themes and Apps forum. Could be the cause.
All my friends group text me all the time and send MMS using the Verizon version Messaging app and hangouts. The stock messaging app world best though.
Sent from my VS980 4G using XDA Premium 4 mobile app

Messager vs Hangouts

I am curious what other Nexus 6p owners are doing with the default Messenger app verses Hangouts to send SMS. On my Note 4 I was using Hangouts. But I read that Google is going to be removing SMS handling from Hangouts. (link) So I am a bit inclined to not use Hangouts anymore for SMS, and just use the two applications separately. I like Hangouts. I redirect no answer calls to my GV number for voicemail, which appears in Hangouts nicely. I'll probably use it for SMS as long as I can, but was willing to try out the stock Messenger application. What does everyone else do for SMS, voice mail, etc?

Stock. Used to use QKSMS or Textra but switched to Evolve SMS all when on my Note 4.
Since switching to Nexus I just use stock. Does the job and looks good.
Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk

I use Textra for some time now and really like it.

PieOfJustice said:
Stock. Used to use QKSMS or Textra but switched to Evolve SMS all when on my Note 4.
Since switching to Nexus I just use stock. Does the job and looks good.
Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk
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Click to collapse
Same. I was a Textra user on everything pre 6P but have switched to Messenger post 6P.
Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk

I currently using Textra. I was rocking stock for a while but I hate the way quick reply takes the whole screen. It's so unnecessary and annoying. I wish they would change it

i was using hangouts for a while since it started handling SMS...and really liked it BUT
once Messenger came out i switched. I wish hangouts looked/worked at smooth as messenger.... maybe in a future update in which it gets better i will....

I use messenger over hangouts for the quick reply feature. I also don't like how it takes up the whole screen, but it's better than not having it at all. I miss the old feature from PA (hover) that let you open any notification in a floating window
Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk

i'm using stock messenger as well. Never did try it with Hangouts, I just didn't feel the need

I use hangouts because:
- Chat/IM/Text/Call in one app is convenient
- I can do all the above on any device without pulling out my phone
I'll be bummed if I have to resort to a separate text app.

Wow, I am surprised so many people don't use Hangouts for SMS. I guess it was pretty buggy at first. Hmmm. I will look into Textra. But probably will try out Messenger for a while at least.

i did use hangouts, ever since they merged it, but yesterday got the 6p, thought i would give messager a go, and i found i do like how well it works.

I use to like hangouts because I liked how they integrated a lot of things and the UI looks nice. I text a lot and when I tried to delete 2000-3000 texts (group text chat) it would take forever, freeze, or never delete them at all. So now i'm using the google messenger and i'm happy with that.

ericstephani said:
Wow, I am surprised so many people don't use Hangouts for SMS. I guess it was pretty buggy at first. Hmmm. I will look into Textra. But probably will try out Messenger for a while at least.
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I only use Hangouts! I'll beleave it when I officially see Google remove SMS from Hangouts.

Personally I'm using YAATA as my sms app. You can find it on XDA / google it. Pretty smooth app.

Is Google voice merged into messenger now?

I use Messenger because of the colorful material look and different colors per contact. It looks nice paired with Flat Style Keyboard. I also wouldn't be able to go without quick reply.