REPRODUCIBILITY: Consistent with some senders (don’t know the condition)
OS VERSION: 4.5.19
HARDWARE: Sony Xperia 10 III
UI LANGUAGE: English (UK)
REGRESSION: Unknown
DESCRIPTION:
I’ve been using this hardware/software for about 1,5 year, never had issues with SMS. Since about 1 or 2 weeks some contacts are reporting they send me a message and i haven’t received them.
It seems to be consistent for some senders. I know 2 senders with problems, 2 senders without issues.
In cases where is goes wrong there is no activity at all: No tone is played, indicator led stays off, no indication on the screen, no message in the messages application.
PRECONDITIONS:
Unknown, need some assistance to troubleshoot. I have contacted my operator who sent me a new SIM to test with an other phone (which i have not done yet, other phone is still recovering from a very flat battery).
STEPS TO REPRODUCE:
Let someone send you an SMS message
Message is not received
EXPECTED RESULT:
I would expect to be notified of the new message and see it in the messages application.
ACTUAL RESULT:
Nothing happens as if no message is received.
MODIFICATIONS:
Plain community version, no modifications.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:
I hope to get some help to troubleshoot this. I’m quite familiar with linux in general, just don’t know where to start troubleshooting this issue.
I don’t know which operator they use. If this information is needed i can ask them later, it’s not an appropriate time to call the now.
My assumption so far is that i expect the messages do arrive on my phone but there is something wrong with the processing on my phone. As far as i know the sender of a message is notified when there is a problem with the delivery.
It would good to motivate how you got to that assumption.
Please elaborate - notified how? There are delivery receipts… but they are kind of optional. “A problem” is not specific enough to detect. The phone might just be off, and delivery delayed.
Is perhaps iMessage playing shenanigans here and trying the messages only in their system even if you are on plain SMS/MMS?
One of my reasons to say it’s an assumption is that i don’t have the actual data, since i don’t know where to search on my phone for any hits of success/failure or even the arrival of a message. Any help there is very much appreciated.
Some messages have been sent weeks ago, so even delayed delivery times have expired. As far as i know a failure to deliver is always reported to the sender, similar to NDR in e-mail.
For at least one of the senders i have problems with i know is using an android phone, so no imessage there. Other owns multiple phones and i don’t know which one he uses for SMS.
Have got a similar problem on my wifes and my phone, both xiii with latest os and o2 germany. Unfortunately the not receiving problem is not persistent. This lead to several situations peaple sent messages and thought i read them, but i did not get. Now we have switched the most conversations to signal, one contact to mail. Due to this reasen my wife maybe switches to iOs. She says, she do not need a lot, but the phone must be reliable in basic functionality and i can understand her…
A log stating that a message has arrived (or the absence of such log entry on a place where you would expect it) would already help as that gives direction on where to search.
Thanks for the hint on Ofono logger, i’ll try that.
I don’t understand what you are trying to say.
No. I’m using two SIM’s, both on 2G (setting one to 4G drains the battery within a day).
It’s the one i installed with, so far there were no issues so no reason for risky updates.
Your friends that don’t get their messages delivered - are they seeing these mythical non-delivery notifications or not? And if so - what do they look like?
This sounds a lot like you are setting yourself up for extra problems.
Can i assume you are flipping 4G on and off a lot?
Unless you patched the bejesus out of your systems, upgrades are really quite safe.
Troubleshooting an old version is a waste of time - especially one that is close to the initial port for the device.
No, my friends simply think i’m not replying to their messages and call me to check what’s happening. If you disagree with me that these non-delivery notifications are send please simply say so, it keeps the conversation nicer. I’m not claiming to be an expert, i’m just sharing my thoughts.
Few times a month maybe, i barely use data services or wifi. What problems do you see in that?
Ok, good to know. The system itself is unpatched and just a few basic apps are installed (osm scout being the largest). I do use openvpn from the terminal with a script.
Is it really that bad? Either things have really gone fast last months or i’ve been looking at the wrong places. Last time i checked there were a few minor updates fixing things that didn’t affect me.
Well, it’s either 2G with a 4 day battery life or 4G with less than a day battery life. There is a generic topic about that here on the forums and as far as i know it hasn’t been fixed.
That’s literally the second thing (sentence) i did - but you chose to be stubborn and not elaborate at all.
The problem could just as well come from simply being on old almost-unused 2G. (Fewer people spotting and caring about misconfigurations).
But 2G and 4G have different backend infrastructure, so if it went to one system, i’m not sure what critera there may or may not be to retry in the other. Obviously this worked at some point, but sounds liek a possible thing to have been broken in all the decommissioning going on.
No, you first asked how, and i elaborated on that. Then there was a “citation needed”, which also sounds different than “I don’t agree with you because of ” to me. And you are right, i’m not taking a deep dive into 3GPP/ETSI documents to find a citation for my suggestion.
For the rest it seems like an issue for the network operator, so i’ll ask for help over there. They’ve sent me a new SIM, and an activation code via SMS … which i didn’t receive :(. Maybe a test with the phone set to 4G could also give some new information.
I’m sorry; but “as far as i know” does not count as elaborating. That’s just repeating the statement.
Googling this is unfortunately filled with cursed AI crap and SMS SPAM tips.
I think is “citation needed” is reasonable to direct at you, not me, as you made the initial claim. Never in my life have i ever seen or heard of one.
Sounds very sensible. As does upgrading, especially so if you think it is an OS bug.
A hint on which part you did not agree with or why would be help me to see which part might need clarification, otherwise there’s not much i can do. And note i’m not asking for citations, and “Never in my life have i ever seen or heard of one” is a perfectly valid reason to disagree, but i can’t read it if it isn’t written.
To me it’s not even sure it’s an OS bug, that’s why i asked for help to troubleshoot this. If logs (or other indicators) tell everything is fine i’m perfectly happy to search elsewhere, but given that my phone is the only thing related to this problem i have control over it makes sense to me to start searching there.
Reasonable; though i thought it was evident i disagreed with the whole premise of their existence. I would have likewise accepted “i used to get lots of these under XYZ conditions back in the day”.
Indeed the only troubleshooting is what you can do on your phone. But unless it has some reasonable chance of paying off, i still think it is a waste of time. Especially before updating.
Seeing as the issue started with no change to the phone, the reason to blame it should really be considered to be next to none. Though using an up-to-date version and VoLTE may well work around it.
Anyway, i’ve checked the specs and negative delivery reports are a thing, but they are only send if you request a delivery report when you send your SMS. So i’ve asked a friend (via e-mail) to send me an SMS with Delivery Report enabled to see if that gives some more information.
My thoughts on this:
if positive delivery report → Must be my phone since the network reports the message is delivered and i’m not seeing it
If negative delivery report → maybe some clue i can give to my network operator (assuming their first line helpdesk understands such a thing, which i know is a stretch).
I haven’t updated yet, i prefer to do that at a time where i have more time available, but i have tested to receive an SMS while the phone is at 4G and the result is the same.
The only vaguely related thing that happened a few weeks ago is that one of my contacts reported strange characters one of my messages (she thought i was fooling her with a puzzle), that never happened before or after, it’s just that it might have happened around the time where my problems started. This is actually one of the contacts can i still receive messages from.
Which is basically what i said; the failures that are fed back are those detected locally - not related to any (non-)delivery reports.
Kind of a simplistic view. Could be fails to register/agree with the network on a delivery method, or some other varied nuance thereof. Or it can be the network being silly more or less by itself. We simply can’t know fully.
Not counting the initial VoLTE beta (alpha?) i have not lost any messages hat i know of. (Xperia 10 III)