Can't Receive Texts

I also did a complete restore-however to no avail. I did it twice even for good measure. But after seeing that some of the problems were solved by deleting some message conversations, I decided to give it a go even though I was super skeptical-but it totally worked! As heartbreaking as it was, I deleted some threads that I knew were quite lengthy and after deleting the first one the texts literally came flooding in! I hope this helps, because I know I spent the last 8 hours having a continuous panic attack!

Got some unfortunate news it would seem...

(my first post on here, and it's a shame for it to be about something as **** as this)

After being on the phone to apple all day yesterday and today, I managed to get put through to a supervisor.

(this is after being on hold for two hours).

He looked over my case, regarding the issue that everyone else in this discussion is having.

(Cannot get messages, as the inbox is full despite plenty of free space on the phone) I have 4GB

The supervisor told me that as of iOS 5, the message limit had been set at 15mb.

He was astounded at both my 92,000 messages, and as to how I knew that specific number.

(I explained that I had used phone view to discover this)

He sent me a web page (that was updated today 15/10/11) explaining this issue. The fact that it was updated today would suggest that this was a purposeful decision by apple to limit the messages as they have.

The web page is:

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1498?viewlocale=en_US

He said as a result, the only course of action would be to delete messages and photos, videos etc to get the messages under the 15mb limit. Alternatively restoring the iPhone to a completely new phone should do the trick.

Neither of these i want to do but have compromised by beginning by going through and manually deleting all the MMS based messages in the "Messages" app. (and so far after about 50 pictures nothing has changed)

I'm hoping that my phone is not going to be like those who have deleted all their message and still have the problem!

He was unsure why, and did not know if an update would be released to remove the limit. But said even if one was released, that it would be at least a month as they try to include as many fixes as possible. (remember when it took three weeks just for that security fix a while back?!)

He proposed that the limit was put in place as a measure to ensure that users did not exceed their iCloud storage space. But this is ridiculous as 15mb is nothing compated to other things on iCloud. I really enjoyed having my iPhone able to hold soooo many text messages. I guess why this is hitting so hard. As it is coming across as such a step backwards. Other than this I have really been liking iOS 5.

At least the Apple representatives (most of) understood the problem and considered how irritating it is and appologised for the long hold times. He even (claimed) emailed some high up software people to see what he could do about tis problem. I have submitted a suggestion/bug report/complaint via the Apple web site and encourage everyone to do the same.

That's disappointing knowing that they changed it to the 15mb rule. What I ended up doing was following the steps in this thread and going back to iOS 4.3. It took some time to do, but once I booted the phone back up, I got flooded with missed texts and got my virtual voicemail back. I have a PC, so if you are following those directions the "option" key is "shift".

Also, what I did was used the software called Touchcopy11, since it worked for a PC. I was able to transfer all my texts over to my PC, including all the pictures embedded in them, to a file on my PC in html format. I tried this while using iOS5 and it did not work for including the pictures, so I had to go back to iOS 4 to get them.

While in 4, I made a back up copy and made a copy of that file and moved it somewhere safe for now. On a PC, it is located on your hard drive under- Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup where username is the name of your computer. So I copied and pasted it somewhere safe for now, just in case apple ever decides to change the rules on a patch. This way I can revert back to that file someday is need be, or if they never do, I atleast have them all saved on my computer. I cannot go any longer without being able to text... onward to iOS 5.

I get this EXACT error message! i spent 4 hours at the apple store, and 3 hours yesterday restoring and backing up from multiple different back-ups! NOTHING CHANGED! I Still got this! http://instagr.am/p/QFmW5/

So today, I deleted half my threads of conversations, it worked for about an hour..and then my error notice came up again!! I'm so freaking frustrated! =[ =[ does anyone have a solution!!?

and i still have 8 gigs of space left on my phone!

As other people have posted, it has nothing to do with total space on phone. It's about how much space you have when it comes to texts. It very well seems the limit was lowered after update. I had the same sms error message when I first installed ios5 it so I went through and delted entire conversations, but it still did not do the trick. Most of the ones I deleted, didnt have many embedded pics/videos. When someone else mentioned deleting videos and pics sent/received in texts, i went through and deleted well over 100 pictures and videos from various friends. After all I care more about thre conversation and not the pictures. if the pic or video was important, I had already saved that on phone anyway. I backed it up on itunes. I went to apple and replaced my phone due to an unrelated issue the day after (which btw the techs were completely clueless on sms issue) came home, restored from most recent backup and I started receiving texts. *knock on wood* No problems as of yet (4 days later) and I only have about 999mb of space left on phone. I wonder if this is something that will happen again so Im always deleting pics or videos from texts after I send them ust in case. H

This is weird. Why isn't there an option to choose the amount of storage that you want dedicted to sms messages? That really seems like a decision for the individual user to make. Especially considering the limit is 15 megs on a phone that stores up to 64 gigs....😕

Still no fixes?

So - I suddenly started having this problem on my iPhone 4S the other day. At first I didn't think anything of the message, until today I had to make some important texts but never got responses. The only texts working were iMessage.

Lo-and-behold the message starting popping up upon restarting the phone.

I spent over 6 hours trying to sort this out. I've been deleting message histories like crazy, including photos too. I tried EVERY suggestion from turning off imessage, icloud, resetting network stuff, general settings, restore, blah blah blah.

I sat on the phone with Apple support for 30 minutes on hold and then an hour on the phone with a supervisor. She was not helpful in the slightest, just redigesting everything that I told her I did already including the restore.

So I was stuck with a useless phone. I knew from the start what the likely fix would be, but I just didn't want to do it. Still don't.

I have a single text conversation history with my girlfriend from the day we met back in '09. I've migrated them from phone to phone. Never given me a problem until now. I consider it to be very important to me, and I always keep regular backups of it as it is.

I was at my wits end, so I deleted it. Suddenly, I got over 50 text messages from various people that have been trying to get ahold of me. My phone wouldn't stop spazzing out. Text messaging now works.

What baffles me about the problem is that:

A) What on earth made Apple LOWER the limit?

B) Why on earth does it matter how long a single message history is?

C) Why doesn't deleting other messages fix the problem?

D) Why doesn't Apple have a clue right now about this?

E) Why did this problem suddenly start occuring for me now? Me and my GF have been using iMessage for 2 weeks now. The problem only started to occur today for me.... It's extremely odd.

I'm restoring my phone now to get the message history back. I rather not get texts than to loose something priceless to me.

And for the record, things like PhoneView and TouchCopy do not backup iMessage conversations.

How annoying! I got this message again after about a month of updating. I was rather careful to delete any pics of videos from texts after sending them but I let some go to see if I would get the message again eventually and indeed I did. Deleting about 50 of them from various texts and a restart did the trick. It is rather annoying to have to worry about deleting pics/videos I receive or send everytime from now on. Hope a patch comes out soon that restores the limit it once had bc I didnt have a problem with over a years worth of texts prior to ios5

After deleting one huge conversation from a two year period, I have yet to have a single problem. Things seem to be going quite well with no error messages as of yet. And it kinda felt good to delet a few things I didnt necessarly need anymore. Hope everyone else has been able to figure this all out!

Janelle