"Your SMS mailbox is full. New messages cannot be received until you delete some messages" - The unresolvable issue

This issue has been an absolute nightmare, spending countless hours online, on the phone and visiting locations with nobody being able to resolve this problem. I think i've spoken to 6 online chat agents, 2 phone agents and visited both my carrier and an apple location, within the past 3 days, with no luck.


I received this error message on Saturday and since then have been unable to receive any SMS messages. iMessage was working completely fine until one of the technicians got me to do something which caused iMessage to stop functioning, which now is stuck with the "Waiting for activation.." message, which is unable to activate due to the requirement for functioning SMS capabilities. Storage on my phone was also not an issue, I initially had 10.5GB available when the problem first started, and was able to clear up to almost 25GB of available space, which also did not help.


I've tried everything. All of the typical tricks for iMessage activation, I've deleted all of my text messages and threads, I've gotten a replacement phone, I've restored to factory settings and restored from computer backup, i've restored to factory settings and restored from iCloud backup, i've reset network settings, I've tried everything and followed every direction that all of the 10+ people i've dealt with have recommended, and nobody is able to correctly explain or troubleshoot the issue. To my understanding now, there simply must be a software issue within iPhones themselves, deeming this error message unresolvable from a consumer's perspective.


This issue needs to be seriously addressed to the programming team as now myself, plus many other stuck individuals I have read about online, have lost all of their content and messages stored on their device


Currently running iOS 9.2.1 on iPhone 6, 64GB

iPhone 6, iOS 9.2.1

Posted on Mar 1, 2016 8:54 PM

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3 replies

Mar 1, 2016 10:51 PM in response to koolestkyle

The SMS data storage has a cap of 15MB since iOS 5 or so. It's estimated that is ~75,000 messages. If you keep restoring backups that have more than 15MB of SMS Messages, that could explain why the issue doesn't go away. I see you have deleted SMS text messages. Does that mean you were unable to SMS immediately after doing that?


I would suggest an erase all content and settings and then start as a new phone for at least testing purposes. If you can SMS freely after that, the issue is likely the number of SMS texts, which are not the same as iMessages.

Mar 2, 2016 4:41 AM in response to LACAllen

The SMS data cap is 15MB? That doesn't seem like very much space for a 64GB phone. Where did you get this info? Everyone I spoke to said they didn't believe there was any storage cap for messages, that it simply was all open space


Once I received that message, I was unable to receive any SMS messages. They were still sending out though. My carrier was able to send me test messages from their system and they were able to determine that my phone was receiving the SMS but just wasn't displaying them. So, just like the pop-up said to do, I started deleting multiple messages and threads, to clear space for new incoming messages. However this did not work, and even after clearing my whole inbox, it still did not resolve any issues

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"Your SMS mailbox is full. New messages cannot be received until you delete some messages" - The unresolvable issue

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