How to avoid sending a text message reply to the wrong person

My girlfriend (who had an iPhone 3 and now has a 4s) has always had problems where she reply's to the wrong person. (and it's frequently embarrassing) If it was once a week or so I'm sure she could live with it but she's a text message fiend and it happens in general three or more times a day no matter how careful she is.


I'm wating for my current phone plan to expire so I can get an iPhone so I really don't have any experience with them so for those more experienced than myself, are there ways to avoid this? Some setting in the text messaging app to help prevent this? If it's a design problem with the default text messaging app are there any alternate text messaging apps that she can use?


Thanks,


Norm

Posted on Oct 23, 2011 6:09 AM

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5 replies

Oct 23, 2011 6:17 AM in response to Norm@Home

I have done it myself. But to be fair - as you are typing your message, at the top of the screen in bold text about three times larger than any other text on the screen is the name of the person you are sending the message to. 😝


Edit: Ah - Siri. Just spotted that. Does Siri not state and/or display the relevant name for confirmation before sending?

Oct 23, 2011 6:23 AM in response to Norm@Home

I'm not sure what to tell you. The only way I can see you might get confused between the messages in the list is if you don't have a contact name associated with a phone number. If that's the case, you/your girlfriend should make sure to update the Contacts database (you can do so from a message by clicking Add Contact).


Once that's done, the name of each person appears both in the message list, and above the message thread. There's not a lot of room in that top space in the thread, so if it's a long name, it will be truncated (13 characters, I think, is about the limit). So if you have one frequently-texted friend called John Appleseed and one called John Appleseeger, that would cause problems. But you can always turn the phone on its side to switch orientation and double-check the name.


You might check the app store for txt apps, but I believe all of them use an "alternate" SMS system (ie, not the one built into your phone) so may charge for txts. However, here's one that displays contact photos and then uses the built-in SMS to write a message (I haven't tried it):


http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/sms-favorites-text-messaging/id401901736?mt=8


Matt

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How to avoid sending a text message reply to the wrong person

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