Bug / feature in messaging

[Guest Stevos]

I just discovered a bug / feature in the standard 2.1 messaging app. It may run deeper to the messaging subsystem but I can't currently confirm.

When a message thread reaches 200 items, incoming mesages are refused. There is a setting in the messaging app menu which explains this

Messaging app | Menu | Settings | Text Message limit -- Which is set to 200 by default.

Unfortunately increasing this limit once it is reached doesn't seem to allow the blocked messages to be delivered, and nor does deleting individual messages from the thread to reduce the number (even with reboots). Also the size can't be easily set to anything more than 999 meaning that long message threads will become a problem sooner or later.

The only way it seems to work is by selecting all messages (in that thread) and deleting all of them, which was so slow it caused a force close/wait and then apparently hung ther phone indefinitely, meaning I had to reboot it. This slowness when dealing with multiple messages is presumably the reason for limiting to 200 in the first place.

On reboot, some of the messages were deleted, but some remained,I then selected and deleted them all again and rebooted. This allowed the held message to be delivered, but unfortunately somehow messed with the threading in some way meaning that subsequent closely timed messages were out of order.

This is just a heads up that the messaging app doesn't seem to play nicely with long threaded messages. Since the refused messages appear to be refused by the phone and held on the network's (t mobile) queue I'm not sure whether it *might* be something intrinsic to the messaging system (and hence a potential problem on any messaging app.) I had been using the default client to minimise memory use and load times on 2.1 but will now be switching back to chompsms or something similar.

Has anyone seem similar issues with other messaging apps?

Edited August 19, 2010 by Stevos

[Guest Fusion0306]

I just discovered a bug / feature in the standard 2.1 messaging app. It may run deeper to the messaging subsystem but I can't currently confirm.

When a message thread reaches 200 items, incoming mesages are refused. There is a setting in the messaging app menu which explains this

Messaging app | Menu | Settings | Text Message limit -- Which is set to 200 by default.

Unfortunately increasing this limit once it is reached doesn't seem to allow the blocked messages to be delivered, and nor does deleting individual messages from the thread to reduce the number (even with reboots). Also the size can't be easily set to anything more than 999 meaning that long message threads will become a problem sooner or later.

The only way it seems to work is by selecting all messages (in that thread) and deleting all of them, which was so slow it caused a force close/wait and then apparently hung ther phone indefinitely, meaning I had to reboot it. This slowness when dealing with multiple messages is presumably the reason for limiting to 200 in the first place.

On reboot, some of the messages were deleted, but some remained,I then selected and deleted them all again and rebooted. This allowed the held message to be delivered, but unfortunately somehow messed with the threading in some way meaning that subsequent closely timed messages were out of order.

This is just a heads up that the messaging app doesn't seem to play nicely with long threaded messages. Since the refused messages appear to be refused by the phone and held on the network's (t mobile) queue I'm not sure whether it *might* be something intrinsic to the messaging system (and hence a potential problem on any messaging app.) I had been using the default client to minimise memory use and load times on 2.1 but will now be switching back to chompsms or something similar.

Has anyone seem similar issues with other messaging apps?

If you set text message limit to, let's say, 20, it won't prevent the 21st message from coming to your phone, it will just delete the oldest in the thread. And it will keep the number of your messages in the thread to what you set as the limit

Edited August 19, 2010 by Fusion0306

[Guest Stevos]

If you set text message limit to, let's say, 20, it won't prevent the 21st message from coming to your phone, it will just delete the oldest in the thread. And it will keep the number of your messages in the thread to what you set as the limit

That doesn't look like what I was seeing - I was getting a notification saying there was not enough room for text messages, and the message didn't show up. The thread being 200 messages long was what clued me into that being the problem, and so I found the setting.

EDIT: I wonder if the overall message storage capacity filled up leading to these problems...

Is there a specific allowance for SMS/MMS, or does it come from overall phone storage?

Edited August 19, 2010 by Stevos

[Guest Fusion0306]

EDIT: I wonder if the overall message storage capacity filled up leading to these problems...

That could indeed cause your problem. When I have a lot of threads and messages, the app becomes laggy, so I set the text and mms message limit to 20 and that works well

[Guest Stevos]

That could indeed cause your problem. When I have a lot of threads and messages, the app becomes laggy, so I set the text and mms message limit to 20 and that works well

Hmm, I'd quite like to have an archive of texts going back months (or ideally years), perhaps that's not realistic though.

I wish the google sync dealt with text and MMS as well and then this wouldn't be an issue. I guess I'll look into 3rd party options.

[Guest Fusion0306]

Hmm, I'd quite like to have an archive of texts going back months (or ideally years), perhaps that's not realistic though.

I wish the google sync dealt with text and MMS as well and then this wouldn't be an issue. I guess I'll look into 3rd party options.

Yes, that would be great... At first, when you open your messaging app, it would sync only visible messages, and if you were to swipe to earlier ones, then it would sync them too. Kinda like gmail...

It would be perfect :D

[Guest Stevos]

Yeah if I get some time I'll maybe try to put a system like that together.

It would need a custom messaging app to deal with the synching, and some backing cloud storage.

Only problems are it would have some privacy and security implications, and might not be feasible to run free on a large scale - and it's probably not the sort of thing people would want to pay for.

Google are in by far the best position to develop it :/