iMessage say 'delivered' but later show as 'failed to send'
This happens to me often -
- send an imessage from my ipad to someone with an iphone.
- my imessage shows "Delivered".
- wait several minutes (as much as 5), then go into airplane mode.
- some time later turn off airplane mode - get imessage notification that the message "failed to send"
my question is - what exactly does "delivered" mean, since it can change to "failed"? To what was the message delivered and what part of the entire process "failed"?
At first i thought it probably meant the message was "delivered" to the apple message server but not the destination device, but that >5 minute lag between me seeing "delivered" and going into airplane mode makes me doubt this. what could possibly take 5 minutes? Especially when i know from experience that many messages can be exchanged in that amount time during an active back-and-forth conversation.
Another thought - the failure was actually on my end when trying to go from Delivered to Read *except* that doesn't explain it because the recipient does Not send read receipts, so that transition never happens regardless of my device connection status.
Note that the recipient says they are not getting multiple copies, no matter how many times i go through those steps until i wait "long enough". which means either it really wasn't delivered, in spite of that 5minute wait OR it was and apple caught that when i hit "resend" and didn't.
anyone have insight?
[Re-Titled by Moderator]