Not receiving text messages? - AT&T, iOS5

[ChrisWard1994]

Maybe if enough people suggest to apple to reinstate the previous sms limit then they will. you can suggest it at http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html

 

[MattSorkinNyC]

First, let me say. For shame Steve-Job-less apple for implementing such a ridiculous solution. One leg up I've always had on other phones is that I know the history of all text message exchanges with anyone I've ever texted. And while that's slightly packrat-ish, with the declining costs of storage AND the opportunity to sell it at a cost (I've always bought the BIGGEST of any of each of your phones), it should remain an option. I hope you re-visit this constraint. OK...off the soapbox.

Yaayy, me for registering to post a solution that worked for me.

It seems that the speculation of the maximum number of text messages is right. Just how many is still TBD. It's not 75k because I got well below that and was still not getting texting. And how do I know how many I had? Introducing PHONE VIEW. (I got this solution of the apple community forum but I started here so I wanted to share it here.) Phoneview is a cool little tool that you can use to view and archive (not edit or delete) texts, pictures, voicemails, files and most other auxiliary memory features.

So here's the solution that worked for me.

Purchase and install Phone View
Plug your phone in and let phone view backup all your texts.
Delete SMS threads. I went through my SMS mailbox and deleted old threads until the new text messages started blinking in. I've seen published numbers of the limit being 75k and 50k. I had to get even lower. It kinda doesn't matter since you now have archives.
Quit messages (as in really quit, not just put in the background)
Power off, power on... messages come in.

Of course, this is not the best solution as I'd have preferred to have kept all of my texts on my phone, but at least they're backed up and accessible on my computer. And for me, it's certainly better than restoring as a new phone and losing all of them.

Make this right Apple.

lol if you look back a page you would have seen i suggested this. program is a life saver though for sure.

 

[Austinjwalker]

what format does the app save the conversations in? As in can I buy the app, then just delete it once it backs it up?

 

[tHeCoNmAn2k]

Pc

Is there a Phoneview equivalent for PC? I can't seem to find any tolerable looking (as awesome as Phoneview) ones.

 

[beachmike83]

Solution

I was able to take care of this problem by turning off the iMessage.

Under the general settings> messages.

After a few minutes 120+ texts came in

 

[vintageapple]

That is ridiculous to set a 15mb limit. Texting is one of the major things I do on the phone and love being able to go into history and find the Info/data/Ideas I have sent to others. I restored from a backup 5 months ago and everything works fine...I am dreading the day I hit the limit. I had 75k+ text messages.

 

[Austinjwalker]

I was able to take care of this problem by turning off the iMessage.

Under the general settings> messages.

After a few minutes 120+ texts came in

didn't work.

 

[Austinjwalker]

long story short, tried to restore new. then ran backup. it restores SMS messages. FML. tried to delete the text conversation thread at once, obviously, and it locks up the iMessage. when you get it back to going, the thread is still there.

Not sure how to mass delete SMS messages. I don't really want to have to pay.

 

[Soonerlaw]

Bought 4s. NO text messages! Received. AT&T

Got 4s. Set up as new phone. Set up I cloud. Then I took my last back up from old 3GS and threw it on the 4s. Everything was there. Went quick etc
I can send text but not receive them for 6 days.
I get the full box message. I got phone view app. Backed it all up. It said I had 48,005 texts. So I deleted a bunch after I saved them all on phone view. I am down to 28,000 text and I still cannot receive text EXCEPT from 4 friends who have a 4s also and they receive my text and also only from other iOS users

Any other solutions? I have tried everything and spent 6 days several hours a day! Ugh

 

[jgw1283]

I'm having the same issues why isnt there a fix for this yet?

 

[freediverdude]

Yep been having the same issue. I guess I will try fiddling with it some more, turning imessage on and off, restarting the phone, maybe seeing if I can restore from the previous backup (not sure how to do that one). Restore phone as new will be a last resort option. I guess we'll see, sounds like Apple and AT&T aren't much help, so I won't bother with them.

 

[freediverdude]

Yep been having the same issue. I guess I will try fiddling with it some more, turning imessage on and off, restarting the phone, maybe seeing if I can restore from the previous backup (not sure how to do that one). Restore phone as new will be a last resort option. I guess we'll see, sounds like Apple and AT&T aren't much help, so I won't bother with them.

Update- I deleted my largest texting thread, toggled iMessage off and on, and then rebooted the phone, and now I have texting again, for the time being.

 

[trixr606]

I believe I have the solution to the problem for many. I updated last night, and as soon as I did, no more receiving text messages. For a while today I would receive them if I would turn the phone off/on. I kept getting notifications that my inbox was full. Before I updated, I would always get notifications like that anyways. I text a LOT and have convo's saved back from '09..

Anyways, when updating to the new OS my memory was incredibly full. It's like when I updated it crammed everything on my phone it possibly could. I had to delete about 500 songs for this update off of my 32 gig iPhone 4. It was still incredibly full. So I deleted about 500 pictures as well today, and now it's been all good.

If you don't have pics or texts you want to delete, you need to delete music or some other sort of data to free up some memory. Hope this helps.

 

[Kilo-9]

I'm having the same problem. It seemed weird that I wasn't receiving replies to my texts. After people asked me why I wasn't answering them, I started to dig around. I rebooted my 4s and the flood gates opened. I never received the SMS inbox full warning, either, they just stopped arriving. I hadn't received any SMS since Friday, but iMessage conversations happened as normal. C'mon Apple, we need iOs 5.0.1 with some bug fixes!

 

[trixr606]

I'm having the same problem. It seemed weird that I wasn't receiving replies to my texts. After people asked me why I wasn't answering them, I started to dig around. I rebooted my 4s and the flood gates opened. I never received the SMS inbox full warning, either, they just stopped arriving. I hadn't received any SMS since Friday, but iMessage conversations happened as normal. C'mon Apple, we need iOs 5.0.1 with some bug fixes!

Did you try what I posted? Delete a lot of your photo's or music. Your phone is probably full. I deleted a bunch of photo's and it's been good since.

 

[waaf1073]

First, let me say. For shame Steve-Job-less apple for implementing such a ridiculous solution. One leg up I've always had on other phones is that I know the history of all text message exchanges with anyone I've ever texted. And while that's slightly packrat-ish, with the declining costs of storage AND the opportunity to sell it at a cost (I've always bought the BIGGEST of any of each of your phones), it should remain an option. I hope you re-visit this constraint. OK...off the soapbox.

Yaayy, me for registering to post a solution that worked for me.

It seems that the speculation of the maximum number of text messages is right. Just how many is still TBD. It's not 75k because I got well below that and was still not getting texting. And how do I know how many I had? Introducing PHONE VIEW. (I got this solution of the apple community forum but I started here so I wanted to share it here.) Phoneview is a cool little tool that you can use to view and archive (not edit or delete) texts, pictures, voicemails, files and most other auxiliary memory features.

So here's the solution that worked for me.

Purchase and install Phone View
Plug your phone in and let phone view backup all your texts.
Delete SMS threads. I went through my SMS mailbox and deleted old threads until the new text messages started blinking in. I've seen published numbers of the limit being 75k and 50k. I had to get even lower. It kinda doesn't matter since you now have archives.
Quit messages (as in really quit, not just put in the background)
Power off, power on... messages come in.

Of course, this is not the best solution as I'd have preferred to have kept all of my texts on my phone, but at least they're backed up and accessible on my computer. And for me, it's certainly better than restoring as a new phone and losing all of them.

Make this right Apple.

This worked for me. What a pain.

Go to apple.com/feedback to report this silliness.

 

[Epsilon9]

Solution to no text problem after updating to iOS 5

This is my first post here, so hopefully I won't embarrass myself with my lack of techno-sense. But I wanted to respond to this thread because I was finally able to resolve this issue on my iPhone 4. My apologies if this has already been resolved. Skip down to the *** for the short version!

Like everyone else who has posted, I was not able to send or receive texts (SMS) messages after loading iOS 5 on my phone. My issue was not a full or overflowing SMS box. I never got the pop up warning people on here have described. But I did delete all my old messages just in case as part of my troubleshooting. I also did several hard reboots and restores from old and new saved backups. None of this worked.

I called AT&T Sunday and they tried to troubleshoot the issue over the phone. Still no success. I went to the Apple Store today and they did everything from a restore as a new phone to taking my sim card out and putting in a new iPhone. After about an hour with no success, they told me to go to an AT&T store.

***I went to the AT&T store expecting complete and epic failure based on a few prior experiences. But much to my surprise, they were able to fix it. Here's what seems to have been the problem: last May I shattered my phone and took it back to the Apple Store. The nice Apple Genius guy replaced my phone at no charge as a courtesy. Unbeknownst to me, he did not update my account records for some reason. When the AT&T people compared the serial numbers on my phone to the numbers they have for my account, the IMEI number and the ICCID numbers were different. They updated the numbers in their system and that fixed the problem! ***

I am not sure if this is the problem or solution for everyone. But I just wanted to let people know how mine got fixed. Good luck everybody!

 

[cnywrestling]

Bringing up what is apparently an old issue, but it's new to me. I got my first iPhone on ebay and put it on the AT&T network. Everything works flawlessly except text messaging. I can send them out just fine and everyone I send to gets them. However, I have yet to receive a single one. I can find hundreds (maybe thousands) of discussions from back in October coinciding with the release of ios5 where people were having the same problem. That appeared to be a text storage capacity issue that I assume Apple took care of because there hasn't been any posts on it since November.

I had nothing on the phone as it was brand new to me, but just to be sure, I restored it as a new phone with ios5 wiping out everything on it. Still doesn't work. AT&T says it's a know iphone issue and judging from all of the discussions you can find by googling it, it looks like they're right. Problem is, none of the fifty solutions that I have tried has got me receiving any text messages. I just love my first iphone, but this is a dealbreaker for me. I must have text messaging.

This is not an issue of a bloated texting box. I have a total of zero messages on the phone. AT&T walked me through every possible cause when I was on the phone with them and nothing there worked. I'm thinking it's an iphone thing. Anybody have any ideas?

thanks.