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Not recieving SMS without an internet connection

I have an iPhone 12, as well as a cellular provider with unlimited SMS talk/text. I have both iMessages and SMS messages turned on in my device settings, with Send & Receive set to my phone number.


I'm in a group chat that has someone with a android device, so from my understanding everything in that group chat is SMS. Everything sent is a green message bubble, so as far as I know imessage and internet connection shouldn't factor in at all.


The issue is, I only receive texts from that group chat when I do have an internet connection, and specifically only when connected to data, wifi is inconsistent. If I have data off, I stop receiving SMS messages. Why is that? How do I fix it? (If possible I'd like a fix without having to disable iMessage entirely, but if it's the only way oh well.)


Additional information that might be relevant: When I have no internet, I can still send SMS messages and they send normally, I just don't receive anything.


I found a similar issue which had a response claiming that iphones default to imessage when wifi is off, but that made no sense to me.

iPhone 12, iOS 14

Posted on Sep 22, 2021 9:56 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Sep 22, 2021 11:35 AM

Any message with multiple recipients (i.e. group messages) are MMS messages. SMS messages are limited to a single recipient.

If you were to send an SMS message to multiple recipients, it would be individual text messages, each addressed to a single individual with no links between them or any way for multiple people to communicate with the "group".


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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Sep 22, 2021 11:35 AM in response to -Ronin-

Any message with multiple recipients (i.e. group messages) are MMS messages. SMS messages are limited to a single recipient.

If you were to send an SMS message to multiple recipients, it would be individual text messages, each addressed to a single individual with no links between them or any way for multiple people to communicate with the "group".


Not recieving SMS without an internet connection

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