iPhone to Android iMessage bug fix

This is infuriating - especially since I see history of this issue going back to 2011. I switched to an Android as well, and discovered too late that everyone I know with iPhones and iMessage history with me are going to be sending iMessages into a black hole! I'm to believe that my only recourse is to (a) change my number, which I've had for 15+ years, or (b) track down 300+ people I know with iPhones and have them delete my contact info, delete all message history, and maybe do a few cartwheels for good luck? And then it still probably won't work? I've done this all with my wife's iPhone, and it still defaults to iMessage. W T F. Between work and personal, I'm easily $10k into Apple products over the last 5 years and I'm about an inch away from abandoning them.

That's great if you're just looking for a quick hack so your significant other can send you text messages again. If you have 300+ people in your contact list, 90% of whom have iPhones, it is not reasonable to suggest that the fix should be contacting everyone one of them to ask them to repeat that procedure. That should be default behavior. So, problem not solved.

How naive ! I have done EVERTHING that Verizon and Apple have suggested.

My last call to Applecare told me they are aware of the problem, the problem has existed for over a year, he was told NOT to submit anymore trouble tickets on this subject for fear of disciplinary action.It has been nearly two weeks and my number has yet to drop off iMessage servers.

Calling apple hasnt done anyyhing. According to them my phone isnt registered. They escelated the issue and a supervisor came on and told me there is nothing they can do, and told me it isnt an apple issue anymore but an issue with the persons phone. So if u get that far and they tell u that, its a **** good bandaid.

Hi _RT_ and Group 🙂
I recently got an iphone 5s and seem to be having similar problems that your wife experienced.

I can send individual texts to my friends with Androids - but I cannot seem to send them a group text. I've tested this and can successfully send group texts to various generations of iPhone users but if there is One Android person in the group - the text fails to send.

Can you tell me how you reset your wife's phone back to 'Network Settings'? Are there any other solutions to this headache that you or the group is aware of?

Thanks for any feedback group!

I find it difficult to understand why Apple can prevent me receiving SMS messages from other iPhones now I have changed my iPhone for a SGS4, and people can insist it is not a glitch or a bug.

The only inference I can draw from this is that they believe that Apple intended to block iPhone users sending SMS to me!

Get real, guys. Smell the coffee. It is (another) Apple idea (read foul-up) which was not thought through and is affecting everyone who moves to a non Apple phone but does not change phone number.

When was iMessage deregistered for you? If already done, the problem lies with the other users and not you. It's your responsibility to reach out to your contacts and let them know you are changing to a non apple phone. If they can't contact you, it's not Apple's fault. How are they supposed to know you changed phones. Apple doesn't maintain the carrier networks only the hardware.

It seems to me there should be a way that Apple realizes you no longer are using a phone that's going through their portals, and it is an Apple problem. You're right that perhaps your Apple users contacts have to be notified so they can make a change to their "Apple" phone, but since Android users or Windows users don't need this information, it shows that the problem all lies within Apple or their products.

I myself went from and Android phone to an Apple phone and there was never any issue with anyone sending me a text, no matter what phone they were using but as soon as I went back to an Android phone, many of my friends with Apple phones could no longer send me a text. This has nothing to do with anything other then an Apple product. If the Android operating system and the Windows operating system is smart enough to realize you're no longer using an Apple product, why can't Apple figure it out?

And not for nothing, but in my opinion, if I want to change the manufacturer of the phone I'm using, I shouldn't have to notifiy anyone other then my cell phone carrier.

The problem is Apple doesn't realize you are not using a phone. The only requirement you have to have for Apple is an Apple ID. If a user continues to use Apple services such as iTunes or an iPad, you are active in their system. If non apple phones users still use Apple services for some content. When you get a phone, it's an added value service that allows communication over it's system and not the wireless carriers. If you choose to discontinue that service, the ownership is not on Apple. They will de-register your phone from the system. But that's all their required to do. After the phone number is gone from their system, along goes their responsibility to do anything else.

dellers1 wrote:

I find it difficult to understand why Apple can prevent me receiving SMS messages from other iPhones now I have changed my iPhone for a SGS4, and people can insist it is not a glitch or a bug.

The only inference I can draw from this is that they believe that Apple intended to block iPhone users sending SMS to me!

Get real, guys. Smell the coffee. It is (another) Apple idea (read foul-up) which was not thought through and is affecting everyone who moves to a non Apple phone but does not change phone number.

Apple isn't blocking SMS messages. If the other iPhone users turn iMessage OFF completely, then the iPhone will only send SMS, not iMessage. You would then get iPhone SMS messages recieved to your non-Apple smartphone.

SMS is controlled by the wireless carriers. Only iMessages are handled by Apple at all.

Alibaba2k2 wrote:

When was iMessage deregistered for you? If already done, the problem lies with the other users and not you. It's your responsibility to reach out to your contacts and let them know you are changing to a non apple phone. If they can't contact you, it's not Apple's fault. How are they supposed to know you changed phones. Apple doesn't maintain the carrier networks only the hardware.

That's a rediculous suggestion - that the burden should be on us to reach out to every single contact to tell them we are no longer using an Apple phone? Particularly when it's an obvious intentionally engineered bug? Apple just chooses not to fix it because it forces people to either stick with Apple products, or be massively inconvenienced. This was never an issue before Apple phones came along - you could switch from a Motorola to a Nokia to a Samsung to a Blackberry to whatever else, and SMS service was never interrupted.

Here are the facts:

1) iMessage traverses Apple's network, independent of carrier networks. So it's basically just a TCP/IP app.

2) As a result of #1, Apple can see whether or not both ends of the communication are using iPhones, and can act accordingly. This is evidenced by those neat little tricks - the fact that you can see someone else typing, or that they read your message, etc. In fact, the protocol is specifically designed to automatically resend an iMessage as SMS, if for example the other iPhone user is not in a WiFi or 3G/4G area.

3) So, since the iMessage protocol natively attempts to resend as SMS if it detects the other end is out of a data coverage area, why should the issue in this thread even exist? I'll answer that for you - because it's Apple's heavy handed way of screwing with people that choose to leave their eco system.

Alibaba2k2 wrote:

The problem is Apple doesn't realize you are not using a phone. The only requirement you have to have for Apple is an Apple ID. If a user continues to use Apple services such as iTunes or an iPad, you are active in their system. If non apple phones users still use Apple services for some content. When you get a phone, it's an added value service that allows communication over it's system and not the wireless carriers. If you choose to discontinue that service, the ownership is not on Apple. They will de-register your phone from the system. But that's all their required to do. After the phone number is gone from their system, along goes their responsibility to do anything else.

Sure they do. They absolutely can differentiate the types of devices using the iMessage protocol on their network (iPhones, iPads, MacBooks, etc.). Not just that, but they can see OS versions, and a bunch of other stuff as well.

I had unfettered access to send and receive SMS messages before iPhone came along, and the type of device or carrier I had didn't matter. I don't buy the idea that just because I once had an iPhone, that it should be challenging for me to receive SMS messages from other iPhone users. That circumstance is unique to Apple, and is enabled by people that for some reason think Apple can do no wrong.

TJBUSMC1973 wrote:

dellers1 wrote:

I find it difficult to understand why Apple can prevent me receiving SMS messages from other iPhones now I have changed my iPhone for a SGS4, and people can insist it is not a glitch or a bug.

The only inference I can draw from this is that they believe that Apple intended to block iPhone users sending SMS to me!

Get real, guys. Smell the coffee. It is (another) Apple idea (read foul-up) which was not thought through and is affecting everyone who moves to a non Apple phone but does not change phone number.

Apple isn't blocking SMS messages. If the other iPhone users turn iMessage OFF completely, then the iPhone will only send SMS, not iMessage. You would then get iPhone SMS messages recieved to your non-Apple smartphone.

SMS is controlled by the wireless carriers. Only iMessages are handled by Apple at all.

Ok, so you're dancing around semantics now. They aren't "blocking" SMS messages. Instead, they just disabled the default behavior of falling back on SMS messages when iMessage isn't available - but only for people that dumped their iPhones for non Apple products.

Call it what you want - the end result is the same.

Just because the message application uses RTC protocols doesn't mean someone is monitoring your every move. That's what technology is for. Less maintenance. Lets put this in layman's terms. You change your phone number and don't contact your mortgage company. They are trying to reach you and tell you they have an overpayment for you due to a court settlement and if you don't claim it in 30 days, it's gone. Based on the settlement, the only way they are required to contact you is by phone. Who's the ownership on? You or the mortgage company? It's pretty funny that all the blame is pushed towards Apple. You can't say this never happened before Apple iPhones because they forced the industry to change and up their game with the first iPhone. Apple is in no way trying to keep you where you don't want to belong. They're too big and have the numbers to back them when customer defect. It's the cycle of life.

Alibaba2k2 wrote:

Just because the message application uses RTC protocols doesn't mean someone is monitoring your every move. That's what technology is for. Less maintenance. Lets put this in layman's terms. You change your phone number and don't contact your mortgage company. They are trying to reach you and tell you they have an overpayment for you due to a court settlement and if you don't claim it in 30 days, it's gone. Based on the settlement, the only way they are required to contact you is by phone. Who's the ownership on? You or the mortgage company? It's pretty funny that all the blame is pushed towards Apple. You can't say this never happened before Apple iPhones because they forced the industry to change and up their game with the first iPhone. Apple is in no way trying to keep you where you don't want to belong. They're too big and have the numbers to back them when customer defect. It's the cycle of life.

Wow, you aren't even comparing apples to apples.

First, I didn't say anything about monitoring. It wouldn't require human intervention for iPhones to fall back on SMS, which is what you seem to be implying. In fact, they already DO that when it detects that an iPhone is out of range of WiFi or 3G - it falls back to SMS. It's fully automated. So it seems that they went out of their way to DISABLE that functionality once someone is no longer using an iPhone. So, why exactly is it funny that Apple is being blamed for that? They should be blamed for that. It's their fault - SMS worked for everyone before, now it doesn't. That's about as black and white as it gets when it comes to blaming someone.

Second, your example with the mortgage company is rediculous. Obviously it is my responsibility to provide them with updates to my phone number because they have no other way of knowing that it changed. In this example Apple has the data available in every iMessage communication to understand that an iPhone is no longer at the other end. They don't have to manually reach out to get that information. So, again, your comparison makes no sense.

Yes, the iPhone did a lot to revolutionize the phone market but that doesn't give them the right to screw up basic functionality for people that choose to leave their products. They have the numbers today - so did Microsoft 20 years ago. Things change, and so too will Apple's dominance.