Sam Martin
Level 1 (38 points)
iPhone

Q: Sent text messages are turning into Chinese

AT&T iPhone 6 running iOS 10.0.2.

It seems that whenever I send a text message of 70 bytes or longer containing any non-ASCII characters (letters are 1 byte, emoji and such are 2 bytes), the non-iPhone recipient sees it as a bunch of nonsensical Chinese characters, and my message is unreadable. Same thing happened when my sister's iPhone 6 sent a message (in English) containing a heart emoji to my parents' phone:

IMG_1631.jpg

 

Has anyone else been experiencing this issue? Any idea what's causing it or how to prevent it? Can I do anything about it, or just wait for an OS update? Thanks.

iPhone 6, iOS 10.0.2

Posted on Oct 18, 2016 5:21 PM

by ardentlyenthused,Solvedanswer
ardentlyenthused ardentlyenthused
Level 1 (14 points)
A:

This is a character encoding issue that currently seems specific to AT&T!  I recently wrote a detailed post about this issue, what's causing it, and what to do about it.  You can read it here:

 

http://poetryproseandpoppycock.blogspot.com/2016/10/solved-mark-and-mystery-of-o verly.html.

 

I tend to write in a humorous, yet informative style because tech-talk can get way too dry.  Enjoy the fix!

Posted on Oct 20, 2016 2:29 PM

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Sam Martin

Q: Sent text messages are turning into Chinese

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  • by Tom Gewecke,Helpful

    Tom Gewecke Tom Gewecke Oct 19, 2016 7:01 AM in response to Sam Martin
    Level 9 (79,538 points)
    Oct 19, 2016 7:01 AM in response to Sam Martin

    IIt's an encoding glitch affecting quite a few users which Apple or someone else has to fix.

  • by Sam Martin,

    Sam Martin Sam Martin Oct 19, 2016 7:09 AM in response to Tom Gewecke
    Level 1 (38 points)
    iPhone
    Oct 19, 2016 7:09 AM in response to Tom Gewecke

    I figured as much, but couldn’t find anything about it from Google. Any way around it?

     

    Edit: Found this StackExchange answer. Sounds like the problem is on the receiving end, rather than the iPhone as I’d assumed.

  • by Klotar,

    Klotar Klotar Oct 19, 2016 7:10 AM in response to Sam Martin
    Level 1 (76 points)
    Oct 19, 2016 7:10 AM in response to Sam Martin

    I believe that not using emoticons (emojii) until the issue is fixed is a possible workaround.

  • by Sam Martin,

    Sam Martin Sam Martin Oct 19, 2016 7:45 AM in response to Klotar
    Level 1 (38 points)
    iPhone
    Oct 19, 2016 7:45 AM in response to Klotar

    Other than that, I mean. Anything I can do to ensure that emoji, curly quotes, dashes, accented letters, etc. do not mangle all but the shortest messages?

  • by Tom Gewecke,Helpful

    Tom Gewecke Tom Gewecke Oct 19, 2016 12:29 PM in response to Sam Martin
    Level 9 (79,538 points)
    Oct 19, 2016 12:29 PM in response to Sam Martin

    Sam Martin wrote:

     

    Edit: Found this StackExchange answer. Sounds like the problem is on the receiving end, rather than the iPhone as I’d assumed.

     

    It's definitely and encoding glitch, where some characters are added to messages and then missread at other end as UTF-16.  But not so clear where the problem is.  Seems to have arisen after recent iOS update, so Apple may have role.

  • by Sam Martin,

    Sam Martin Sam Martin Oct 19, 2016 10:09 AM in response to Sam Martin
    Level 1 (38 points)
    iPhone
    Oct 19, 2016 10:09 AM in response to Sam Martin

    After getting ahold of some of the actual mangled text, I noticed that each character’s code point in Unicode was offset by 4,000. For instance, “A” is at code point U+0041, but what you get instead is “䁁”, which is U+4041. What seems to be happening is iOS adds a “@” (U+0040) between each character before sending, and the receiving device converts this from UTF-8 to UTF-16. For instance, “Hello” gets sent as “H@e@l@l@o@”, which—when encoded as UTF-8 and read as UTF-16—renders as “䁈䁥䁬䁬䁯”.

  • by Tom Gewecke,

    Tom Gewecke Tom Gewecke Oct 19, 2016 10:34 AM in response to Sam Martin
    Level 9 (79,538 points)
    Oct 19, 2016 10:34 AM in response to Sam Martin

    Sam Martin wrote:

     

    What seems to be happening is iOS adds a “@” (U+0040) between each character before sending, and the receiving device converts this from UTF-8 to UTF-16. For instance, “Hello” gets sent as “H@e@l@l@o@”, which—when encoded as UTF-8 and read as UTF-16—renders as “䁈䁥䁬䁬䁯”.

     

    This is indeed how all the texts I have decoded are structured.  But I am not sure where the @ gets added or how the message gets marked as utf-16, as I think I have read that recipients with iOS devices don't always have the wrong display (neither extra @'s nor Chinese).

  • by Carole Xyla,

    Carole Xyla Carole Xyla Oct 19, 2016 10:41 AM in response to Sam Martin
    Level 1 (8 points)
    iPhone
    Oct 19, 2016 10:41 AM in response to Sam Martin

    This just happened to me. I sent a text to wish someone a happy birthday and it was in Chinese when they got it. just like the picture above. Any ideas why?

  • by Carole Xyla,

    Carole Xyla Carole Xyla Oct 19, 2016 10:44 AM in response to Tom Gewecke
    Level 1 (8 points)
    iPhone
    Oct 19, 2016 10:44 AM in response to Tom Gewecke

    im not understanding what you are saying. Since the IOS 10 update strange things have been happening

    is apple aware of this problem. Chinese text was not what I want to send as a birthday wish

  • by Tom Gewecke,

    Tom Gewecke Tom Gewecke Oct 19, 2016 10:46 AM in response to Carole Xyla
    Level 9 (79,538 points)
    Oct 19, 2016 10:46 AM in response to Carole Xyla

    Yes Apple is aware.  It's a bug of some sort somewhere that has to be fixed.

  • by Carole Xyla,

    Carole Xyla Carole Xyla Oct 19, 2016 10:46 AM in response to Klotar
    Level 1 (8 points)
    iPhone
    Oct 19, 2016 10:46 AM in response to Klotar

    ok I did use emoji balloons in the happy Birthday test i hope that was the problem.

  • by DogGone!,

    DogGone! DogGone! Oct 19, 2016 11:35 AM in response to Sam Martin
    Level 1 (9 points)
    iPhone
    Oct 19, 2016 11:35 AM in response to Sam Martin

    Apple put out an update (10.0.3) which I just installed.  The problem still exists.  For me emoji has nothing to do with it.  The only keyboard I have is english.  Here is what I have found out.

    1.  Only seems to effect text messages longer than 2 lines.

    2.  Does not seem to effect iMessages.

    3.  Does not matter the receiving device.

     

    Apparently, the update did not fix the problem.  This is really getting on my nerves.  I spend all day at my desk and communicate with people in the field thru text.

  • by rangers1026,

    rangers1026 rangers1026 Oct 19, 2016 12:11 PM in response to Sam Martin
    Level 1 (4 points)
    iPhone
    Oct 19, 2016 12:11 PM in response to Sam Martin

    My mom says she downloaded an emoji board on her Galaxy S5 and it has happened to her since. Did I find the problem in a possible virus for android?

  • by Sam Martin,

    Sam Martin Sam Martin Oct 19, 2016 12:15 PM in response to Tom Gewecke
    Level 1 (38 points)
    iPhone
    Oct 19, 2016 12:15 PM in response to Tom Gewecke

    iOS devices would use iMessage rather than SMS, no?

     

    I’m assuming the issue has to be on the sending side, since like you said earlier, it started after iOS 10.0.2 came out. And this seems to happen every time I send an SMS longer than half a tweet with certain special characters. Emoji trigger it, curly apostrophes ’ do it, but accented letters don’t (which surprised me).

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