iPhone 4s won't delete texts, and when I try to delete texts, the app freezes and I have to reboot my phone

I am having the same problem. I have had the 4s since march of 2012 and I have never deleted texts because it never said in the usage section that it took up a lot of space. But with the recent updates it shows my texts are occupying 4GB of data and I would really like to delete 90% of them. But I have the exact same problem, phone freezes, can not send or receive messages, have to reboot, and then the texts reappear. HELP

I'm in the same situation and I'd really love an answer as well. I've been to the Apple store and one of the employees didn't even really want to help and thought I sounded like an idiot when I tried to explain the situation. She suggested to just set up as a new iphone but I don't want to do that jus the same as y'all don't. I have over 15GB of "Documents and Data" on my phone so it's an even worse situation there. Hope we will eventually see a resolution.

I am having this same problem, I really want to free space to be able to save to the icloud again. Has anyone come up with a solution?

i too am having the same problem woth my iPhone 5 it seens to be only after i updated to IOS 7

Really weird! I had the same exact problem on my iPhone 4. After continuously deleting unwanted threads and then having to reboot my phone because the messages app crashed (and all my deleted threads coming back to life), I decided to just delete one unwanted thread. I then closed my messages app and reopened it and it hesitated for a second, even tried to force me to create a new thread because it must've thought I had no messages again (what it usually does after trying to delete messages and then crashing), but I hit cancel and, low and behold, all the messages that I'd been trying to delete we're just gone, just like that. It's really weird. I feel like these phones are programmed to grow stupid, but try it! Just delete one thread (or maybe a couple) and close the app and reopen it. Maybe it will work for you guys too :)

And no one at Apple has a fix for this? Guys? Hello? Anyone home?

I recently spoke to someone from Apple support, and here's what I gathered:

"Older" phones (read: anything iPhone 4s or older?) sometimes have trouble keeping up with the processing demands of the newest software. When deleting threads with a lot of media (photos, videos, etc), it can take a lot of processing to successfully delete. What this support tech suggested was picking some of the bigger threads at night before you go to bed, deleting them, and then leaving the phone alone-- and plugged in-- overnight to give it enough time to delete everything. He suggested not even pressing the lock button; just leave it to process (though I imagine the screen will lock on its own anyway).

Not sure if it works yet since I just spoke to him, but it's the closest thing I've got to a solution!

Did you try it/has this worked for you? I have a 4s and the same problem. I've been deleting a few texts at a time (like 13 messages) because anymore my phone freaks out, but it is taking forever to do. Please let me know!

Yep it worked for me! I plugged it in to charge at night, picked three of my biggest threads with the most messages/photos/videos, deleted them, and left the phone overnight. You can't do anything with the phone other than leave it to process after you delete the threads (ie dont try to go set an alarm or anything). When I wake up in the morning, the phone is fully functional, the threads are gone, and I have more space on the phone.

Good luck!

after months of not being able to delete old texts (over 7 gigs worth) i finally got rid of them by deleting them and letting the phone sit over night, just like this thread mentions. in the morning i was able to send texts again and they were gone for good. prior to that i would delete them and my phone would freeze up in the imessage app and i couldn't send or recieve texts. then i'd restart my phone and the texts would be back. it was pretty annoying. nice to have storage again.

I'm having the same problem and I've let my phone sit over night, 8 hours straight for the past 2 nights, and when I wake up I have to restart my phone because it won't send messages. When I restart my phone, the person who messages I was trying to delete is back. I'm not sure if it hasn't deleted any of them or just not all of them. It's just this one person it's doing it to though. I've been able to delete everyone else. Any suggestions!?

I have an iPhone 4 and I was having the same problem as you. I followed someone's advice I saw posted which was to tap on a message in a thread and hold down. Press "more" and then at the top by the contact's name press delete all. It'll probably run slow but then it'll delete and the only thing that will be left will be the contact's thread. Kill the app (double click on the home button and swipe it up) and then go back and click edit and then remove the thread. You will have to kill the app before every step and even though it's slow it still does the job.

Delete the text. Connect iPhone to iTunes and Click Sync.

Tried it multiple times for my iPhone 4 and it didn't work. I deleted all the threads I didn't want THEN connected my phone but it wouldn't recognize my phone every time. Didn't work when I connected my phone, backed it up, deleted the thread(s) THEN hit sync, that froze up computer. Nothings working so far but I'm trying the first suggestion again tonight. But has anyone else gotten water damage? I've dropped my phone in water (the toilet, back pocket problems) three times and I think that's the reason along with it being too old. Any really recent fixes?? I'm kind of desperate for space and a working phone.

Sadly that didn't work either 😟