This started a few days ago. I’ve been getting texts from friends with iPhones in the wrong order, and seemingly they are getting mine late. So I texted a friend whose grandmother was in the hospital yesterday, and her conversation with me looked like this. These texts from her arrived around a minute apart each. I think the intended order of them is fairly obvious. It’s worth noting that every time I send her a text, the read receipt line under the text shows a little clock for a few seconds or more, which I think means it hasn’t been recieved by her phone yet. Also worth noting that I had a conversation using the same stock messaging app with my mom yesterday who has an android and I don’t think we had any such issue, but that may have actually been RCS.
Anyway, here’s the example. It’s not the only example I’ve had with her or with another iPhone-using friend in the past couple days.
Me: Hey, how’s your day? Any updates about your grandma?
Her (a few hours later): I feel relieved
Me: does that mean you got good news?
Her: how was your day?
Her: yeah
Me: my day was good, (proceeds to describe what I did that day)
Her: my family feels relieved too
Me: what was the good news? Your grandma is okay?
Her: Hey $bionicjoey, I didn’t get much sleep last night but I just heard that the doctors say my grandma is out of danger.
Edit: I texted her last night saying something weird was going on after that exchange, and then this morning at about 7:30 AM I texted her saying “let me know as soon as you get this”. She just texted me at 2:30pm saying “I just am just now seeing your texts”
This is almost certainly not the issue, but check and make sure the time/date is set automatically. I’ve seen the issue above before when someone’s phone is set manually and the 1 minute difference causes the texts to display weird.
Yeah no, I wouldn’t even know where to set the time on a smartphone. It’s definitely automatically synced from the internet (or mobile carrier, not actually sure where it gets its NTP from)
Edit: just found that setting, it was indeed already set to automatic. So that’s not the issue.
It could still be if your or their carrier/network time is wrong.
Also, I’m a little confused when you mentioned the little clock under the message. SMS doesn’t support read receipts. Some carriers support delivery receipts but these don’t work well across different message centres.
Yeah I think they are delivery receipts, not read receipts. That’s my mistake. Anyway I know after some time it changes from the little clock to an actual timestamp. In the past nearly instantly but lately it could be like a minute before it changes.
That doesn’t sound like SMS delivery receipts. They are slow (that’s one of the reason Google developed RCS)
I think you are actually seeing the message sending animation.
Just tried it on an Android, yes little clock is the phone sending the message it then changes when the message has been sent.
The fact that it’s taking up to a minute to send the message tells me that the fault is at the message centre.
By message center do you mean my mobile carrier?
SMS messages are sent through a message centre. It might be owned by your carrier or a third party. On Android in Messages if you look in settings under Advanced you’ll see SMSC followed by a phone number. That’s the number of the message centre your phone contacts to send an SMS
I see it. What can I do with this information? Should I call my carrier and let them know about a service problem?
The first thing to do is to check the message centre number is correct. You should be able to get this from your carrier’s website.
If it is then turn the phone off, leave for a few minutes. Turn it on. Wait a few minutes.
Send a fresh message to the one of the people you’ve been having problems with. Do not reply to one of their messages, it MUST be a fresh message (it’s technical but I’ll explain if you want.)
If that shows the error then call or contact your carrier explaining that text messages are taking too long to send and arriving late.