Develop Bugs

FIXED: SMS Timestamp Issue

UPDATE: I've found a fix for this issue - AWESOME!
Just go to the Android Market and install the SMS Time Fix app by Matt Precious.
http://www.androlib.com/android.application.com-mattprecious-smsfix-pAFq.aspx
It works perfectly, and updates the time stamp on all messages to relfect PHONE time and not network time. HINT: Make sure the "Last Resort" option is checked in the settings and offset is set to zero. This little app now makes the Evo Messages app usable. Finally...
Hope this is helpful info
So, I've been reading and experiencing several issues with SMS timestamps on the Evo 4G.
It seems there are three distinct issues with SMS timestamps on the the Evo and I believe they all have the same root cause.
Issue 1: When roaming texts are received with the wrong time stamp, offset by several hours (typically 4 or 5 hours off). This causes them to not be threaded in the conversation correctly. Very annoying.
Issue 2: When receiving SMS messages on any network (Sprint or Roaming), the time stamp is off by an hour. The result is the same as Issue 1, but a less extreme example.
Issue 3: When texting back and forth in quick succession, SMS messages are not logged in the order in which they are received, and received text messages ALWAYS appear before sent text messages if they are sent during the same minute, regardless of which one was actually sent first. This is also very annoying.
I believe the root cause is that the native Sense UI messaging app is using the timestamp of the tower of each SMS rather than using the time stored on the phone. To prove this, if you use Handcent and set it to use "phone time" and ignore the tower time, it works perfectly. The thing is that I don't want to use Handcent and I want to use the native app. Is there a setting that can be tweaked to fix this? Has anyone talked to HTC or Sprint about the issue and is a fix in the works?
For such a major problem, I am surprised more people haven't come forward. It's a pretty significant bug...
Thanks,
Matt_TX.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

I agree and its getting really annoying since it causes me to miss texts.

NM, too easy

Has anyone talked to Sprint or HTC about it? I am sure there HAS to be a fix in the works. The good news is that the native Froyo messaging app does not do this (as far as I can tell). I used a Nexus One on T-mobile and it doesn't occur. It appears to be using the phone's timestamp, as it should...
As long as HTC don't apply their "logic" (or lack thereof) over Froyo, it should be fixed soon.
I also can't believe that Sense UI stops the user from having more than one Exchange account. Android 2.1 (Eclair) does this by default. Why on earth would they remove it?
Anyway, back on topic... Please please post with your thoughts and discoveries around the SMS timestamp issue.
Thanks!

How is this related to development?

tkrechel said:
NM, too easy
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm not sure what you mean by "NM, too easy". Can you explain or provide any insight. Please help if you can. For those of us with this issue, it's REALLY annoying. I apologize if the question is dumb and there is an easy fix.
I realize that some of you may not feel that it is related to development, but I disagree. For those geniuses out there that make ROM's, maybe there is some way to fix this with a setting or minor change in the Sense UI messaging app...
Additionally, there is no need to berate someone that's genuinely asking for help. It's obvious that this forum gets the most traffic, and it's obvious that the smartest "Evo User" minds are located here. I don't think there is any harm in reaching out for help, isn't that the purpose behind these forums

The samething was happening to me last night.
Sent From My HTC EVO 4G

nebenezer said:
How is this related to development?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Agreed. If its not happening with Handcent nor the AOSP apk, then its a direct HTC issue.
General Discussion. Also, probably not really that urgent.

./agree on all poins with OP.
I posted in Q&A about this same issues, with no replies 8(.
Anyway, I thought it was related to the modified prl that I installed. However it would do it even when I was on the stock prl.
Long story short, I called sprint and said I was having the issue. They said they were going to refresh something on their side, to wait 20 mins then power cycle the phone.
Did that and to my surprise it worked! Then yesterday I re-flashed a custom rom and the sms timestaps went all wonky. /sigh

suck it up and use handcent or chomp, they are overall better apps, just not as nice of a UI.

this has been a problem for quite some time. I've looked everywhere for a solution. This was a problem on winmo phones as well.
I switched to handcent and never looked back. Once you get it all customized, it's awesome.

davebu said:
suck it up and use handcent or chomp, they are overall better apps, just not as nice of a UI.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
look at this guy.
handcent didn't work on my froyo rom, not sure about chomp, didn't try it.
at work i always have this problem, texts are recieved 5 hours into the future, whereas the ones i send are the correct time. occasionally ones they send are the correct time so i have to scroll up and down and it is very annoying.
not a fan of handcents pop up notifications, i guess i could turn em off.
guess i'll just 'suck it up'

regulator207 said:
this has been a problem for quite some time. I've looked everywhere for a solution. This was a problem on winmo phones as well.
I switched to handcent and never looked back. Once you get it all customized, it's awesome.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yup, had the same problem on my old HTC Diamond with Sense/TF3d on it.

Updated First Post...

[BUG]Android firing a message to the wrong person!

Have you read this terrible notice from engadget.com?
Android still has horrible text messaging bugs that'll get you fired, busted, or otherwise embarrassed
By Chris Ziegler posted Dec 31st 2010 1:12PM
Pardon us if the headline is a little sensational, but this is one that we've personally experienced -- and it's not pretty. For at least the last couple versions, Android has been plagued with a couple extremely serious bugs in its text messaging subsystem that can ultimately end up causing you to text the wrong contact -- even contacts that you've never texted before. There appear to be a few failure modes; the one we definitely experience on the Gingerbread-powered Nexus S involves being routed to the wrong thread when you tap it either in the Notifications list or the master thread list in the Messaging application, so if you don't notice, you'll end up firing a message to the wrong person.
More seriously, though, there's also an open issue in Android's bug tracking system -- inexplicably marked "medium" priority -- where sent text messages can appear to be in the correct thread and still end up being sent to another contact altogether. In other words, unless you pull up the Message Details screen after the fact, you might not even know the grievous act you've committed until your boss, significant other, or best friend -- make that former best friend -- texts you back. There seem to have been some attempts on Google's part over the year to fix it; we can't confirm that it still happens in 2.3, but for what it's worth, the issue hasn't been marked resolved in Google Code... and it was opened some six months ago.
This is akin to an alarm clock that occasionally won't go off (we've been there) or a car that randomly won't let you turn the steering wheel -- you simply cannot have a phone that you can't trust to communicate with the right people. It's a deal-breaker. We're pretty shocked that these issues weren't tied up and blasted to all affected phones as an over-the-air patch months ago, but whatever the reason, we'd like to see Google, manufacturers, and carriers drop every other Android update they're working on and make sure this is completely resolved immediately.
Want to see this fixed as much as we do? Scroll to the bottom of the Google Code page and hit "Vote for this issue and get email change notifications."
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Contribute yourself to convince GoogleGuys to fix it!

Never had any issue with this...

Maybe, it happens only on the default Google sms app not the HTC one.

I've often sent 2 - 3000 text messeges a month with two diffrent devices over the last 18 months and never had this problem. on the otherhand engadget are known for chatting sensationalist rubbish, only to have to apologise later in an editorial.

Fightspit said:
Maybe, it happens only on the default Google sms app not the HTC one.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have experienced this with the HTC messaging one. When I individually texted "Happy new year!!" to everyone, the bug happened twice and it actually sent to someone else.

AndroHero said:
I've often sent 2 - 3000 text messeges a month with two diffrent devices over the last 18 months and never had this problem. on the otherhand engadget are known for chatting sensationalist rubbish, only to have to apologise later in an editorial.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
is not sensationalism, is an actual big ugly bug.

crapula512 said:
is not sensationalism, is an actual big ugly bug.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If it's a bug, then why have I not encountered it since owning this phone for 7 months?
It could be a stock Android problem as already mentioned (HTC Sense ROMs have a different messaging application).

I found a post in the discuss thread where a guy explain how to reproduce this *bug*:
killerbee3 said:
If anyone is interested, evidently "Darth Mo" has been able to replicate it - found in ACentral Forums - entire post follows;
"It's not user error, or at least it's a combination of user technique and a possible design. It has to do with how the stock messaging app interacts with the Android system notification.
I recreated it this way. Open a text, but only from the notification bar. You will be taken directly to the conversation from that contact. Now, just hit the home button to get back to the home screen. Repeat this four times to let the open conversations build up. We'll call the earliest contact 1, the next 2, etc. for this example. Let's say you converse with these contacts over some time so that messages occur in this chronological order (opened from the notification menu if possible) : 1, you, 2, you, 3, you, 4, you, 1, 3, you, 3.
Now, you've read the message from contact 3, but quickly hit the back button because you need to send a message to contact 4. So you're back at the conversation list and select conversation 4. You compose and send your message and off you go. But, what can actually happen is that your message went to contact 1 because there is a bug that when you use the back button, it will take you to the conversation screen and when you select one, it will take you to the conversation with the last "unreplied" message received before the last conversation you didn't reply to, regardless of the one you actually select from the list. It's easy to miss that it took you to the wrong conversation as the on screen info can take a beat to update and it looks like you've select the right conversation. The kicker is the conversation list does highlight the one you meant to select, but will take you to that other conversation. It's as if it's saying, "Hey, I know you want to go to that one, but you opened this message and jumped out of it without replying. Maybe you didn't see it."
It's pretty easy for people to not have seen this for a few reasons:
1. You open messages directly from the messaging app
2. You close out every conversation using the back button and don't let them build up on top of each other
3. Messages can come in such a sequence that the conditions are never correct
4. It has actually happened, only the last "unreplied" message was from the conversation you actually intended to enter
I was able to create reliably using my Google voice number to send myself text and watched it bounce around conversations seemingly randomly. It was only when I looked at the times of each message with no replies that I saw what it was doing actually had order to it.
About 30 minutes of experimentation to figure it out, but I had to know how this was happening as I could see it leading to an egregious error later. Now to explain it to HTC..."
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

i've never had this either - i use handcent

Since a few minutes ago, the issue is considered critical instead of of medium:
http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=9392#c794

Are kiddin me?
I dont send any sms for a while , this is a very big issue !
It never happened to me but , this is a realy really big bug!

Mekrel said:
If it's a bug, then why have I not encountered it since owning this phone for 7 months?
It could be a stock Android problem as already mentioned (HTC Sense ROMs have a different messaging application).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
why havent you encountered it? i have no frikking clue and i dont care.
fortunately now it is a critical bug.
btw, i just care about android stock problems, im not using that sense stuff.

I quite often get messages which are meant for other people from someone who has a samsung galaxy (seems that's it's a copy of the message, rather than it being sent to the wrong sender).
I don't text as much, so less prone to the error.

happened to me on stock Android. Never on HTC Sense or mod

I have actually had this bug... but it reported the message had gone to the wrong person, but the correct person replied so I assumed it was reporting it wrong.... only happened twice.
on stock rom unrooted desire

I'm using a stock ROM & native SMS. I get this bug quite a few times.
I'm working in a very loud environment, so I send & receive lots & lots of text messages.
I notice that when i have lots of threaded messages, the SMS starts to slow down & sooner or later the bug will cause me send a text to the wrong recipient.
I'm quite careful of what I'm sending now.
HTC & they told me to reset the phone.
It hasn't been fun for me since I have to reset the phone once a month because my threaded sms buildup very quickly...
I'll update to 2.29.405.5 to see if this fixes anything.

Guys,
Is the 'wrong' person who receives the message someone in your phonebook or a total stranger. If it'd someone you don't know... how does your phone pick that number up? Randomly?
I had my Desire since April, and never had this issue. I open texts from notification bar and have sent them frequently.

I've had a G1, Magic, Milestone and now a Desire and I've never experienced this at all.

I don't think this bug is very common... I've never experienced it myself and none of my android friends have either...
Just some evil forces trying to make the Android OS look bad. Not our fault they couldn't resist taking a bite of that apple so screw them!

Overblown sensationalism AKA typical journalism. It's a bug but seldom a problem encountered by users, or XDA-Dev would've been flooded with such problem threads long before such publicity sites noticed. Just me personally having switched between over a dozen ROMs/kernels and their versions since March with over 60 average text out per day since and not one occurrence means it isn't anything but rare. I rely on SMS very much daily.
------------------------------
- Sent via HTC Desire -

[Q] Carrier/Operator messages appearing under personal contact

Hi there,
This is a problem that I'm experiencing since I got my Desire HD and I will explain exactly whats happening. I dont know if there is already a thread opened in relation to it, I searched the forum and couldnt find anything. I there is a thread already open, then I apologize and ask that someone direct me to it.
So...
When I receive a carrier/operator message that message appears under the name of one of the persons under my contacts list. It always appears under the same person.
I have already tried to make a factory reset twice and the problem occurs again and again.
Its not something that stops me from using my phone, but rather annoying. Also, because some of the carrier/operator numbers do not accept replies to it, sometimes I cannot text the person on my contact whos being confused by the carrier.
Hope I could make myself understood
Anyone else here experiencing the same problems? Do you know how to resolve it?
I know this is a problem affecting other people, not only me. This is my first Android phone so Im not sure if its Desire HD specific, Android specific or a HTC problem. I know one other person who is experiencing the same exact problem. That person also has a Desire HD.

Is that other person on the same network?
Not an issue specifically tied to the Desire HD nor Android.
My first thought would be to contact the network provider. Are your contacts sync'd with Gmail account or did you import from SIM card?
Sent using witchcraft via XDA Developers App.

Hey there,
First of all, thanks for the quick reply.
No, my friend who's experiencing the same exact problem he is not using the same network.
I might give it a try and call the carrier but Im a tech support guy myself and Im afraid I already know what their answer will be...
Im sure me and my friend, we are not the only ones experiencing this problem. I remember some time ago reading something about this problem somewhere but I overlooked it as I thought it would never happen to me. Now I cannot find it anywhere.
I guess not many people report this problem because it doesnt stop you from using the phone and only affects one of your contacts. The thing is that its quite annoying, even more when I cannot text the person as the phone thinks I want to text the network operator.
I dont think this is an Android issues, I think its probably something with the HTC rom. My contacts were pulled from my previous phone via bluetooth. I do not store my contacts in my SIM card. On the phone I see my contacts under 'people'. Also, HTC links my contacts (between my friends on facebook and the ones I have under 'people')... And I think that this is actually the problem.
I tried already to unlink this one contact but still Im keeps getting operator messages under his number.
As I said, my friend who's experiencing the same exact problem is on a different network operator. Also, I bought my phone SIM Free (not linked to any operator), while he bought his under contract and not SIM Free.

Actually, just searching a bit further on Google with different keywords and found a guy in Mexico who's experiencing the same problem (Im in the UK). Also found a huge thread on androidforums with people from different carriers also reporting the same issues.
Will read a bit further to see if I can get this sorted. Apparently is being caused by the 'facebook contact sync' and disabling it stops it from happening.
Not really a good resolution though, as if the 'facebook contact sync' exists, then we should be able to use it without causing problems for other applications.

Hopefully it is as simple as that.
I don't use Facebook which is probably why I never had or have seen this issue.
Please do let me know if that fixes it.
Cheers.
Sent using witchcraft via XDA Developers App.

[Q] Google Voice Notification Not Going Away

Howdy,
Before I upgraded to CyanogenMod 9.0, I would get a Google Voice message notification for a text message. I'd go into the web version of Google Voice, answer the text and then after a bit, the notification would go away on my phone.
Now switched to CM9 and the notification doesn't go away unless I answer the text on my phone or clear it out on the phone.
I've tried GummyNex and CM9 and they both do it.
Has anyone else seen this? I've done the thing where I've uninstalled GV, did the *73, deleted all the Verizon VMs and the reinstalled GV but it still does it.

Don't think its related to your ROM as I'm having the exact same issue on stock 4.0.4 and have always been on stock. Seems to have started a couple weeks ago....
Been pulling my hair out trying to figure out what's going on and was about to start a thread myself asking if anyone else had the issue. Thought I was just crazy at first, but I know for a fact this is not how the app acted before. I've tried changing all kinds of things for my browser use of voice.google.com, deleted/re-installed the app, and nothing works.
I'll be texting using just the browser for a bit and look at my phone and I'll have a notification for "25 Google Voice Messages" or whatever. They never clear. I notice that when opening the GV app to the thread I'm texting in, it hasn't synced in the background, and takes a few seconds for the messages I had sent to show up in the thread. It seems as though Google Voice isn't getting background sync anymore.

Aww man So it was just highly coincidental that it happened around the same time I switched over to a different rom.
It's surprisingly frustrating for such a little thing. I just use it so much that it forces me to check the phone and clear it manually to make sure I don't *actually* have a new message when I'm using both my phone and the web app.
Argh.
Yeah - nothing I've found has fixed the issue.

Seijin said:
Aww man So it was just highly coincidental that it happened around the same time I switched over to a different rom.
It's surprisingly frustrating for such a little thing. I just use it so much that it forces me to check the phone and clear it manually to make sure I don't *actually* have a new message when I'm using both my phone and the web app.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes I think it's actually a coincidence as I said I've been on stock and it all of a sudden stopped working as it was. This is just really weird because there's been no update to the app or anything.
It's extra frustrating because Google Voice is my primary #, so I'm doing about 99.9% of my texting with it, and really enjoy being able to use voice.google.com. Dealing with clearing GV notifications every time I pick my phone up is very lame.

I don't believe I'm experiencing this, gv on GSM nexus, stock 4.0.4 rooted. Straight talk tmo mvno
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

I don't currently have this with my yakju 4.0.4 OTA stock ROM, but I have seen it before on this phone and every other phone I've owned across stock & custom ROMs. Fairly confident it's a problem with the app itself

@crachel - are you on cdma or gsm?

crachel said:
Fairly confident it's a problem with the app itself
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What could it be though? I've done everything short of a factory reset. Nothing about the app itself or the settings I used changed and it started happening out of nowhere.

Seijin said:
@crachel - are you on cdma or gsm?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
GSM
martonikaj said:
What could it be though? I've done everything short of a factory reset. Nothing about the app itself or the settings I used changed and it started happening out of nowhere.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't know.. I agree though that the problem just comes and goes, which is odd. Just a couple weeks ago they weren't clearing for me, but right now it's working fine. I remember thinking that's it's ridiculous this happens on stock firmware

crachel said:
I don't know.. I agree though that the problem just comes and goes, which is odd. Just a couple weeks ago they weren't clearing for me, but right now it's working fine. I remember thinking that's it's ridiculous this happens on stock firmware
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Even moreso ridiculous if this is a known issue and they haven't addressed it even with these several early 2012 updates to the GV app, which made it a lot better overall in UI and UX. I just don't see how it can come and go with no changes whatsoever to your settings.

Mine definitely does the same thing... I thought it used to clear them for me, but I wasn't sure, and figured I was just thinking of how Google Talk clears the messages.
Not a huge deal to me, but it would definitely be nice if they would fix this. Our best bet is to make a post on the help forums with a bunch of posts in it.

xur17 said:
Mine definitely does the same thing... I thought it used to clear them for me, but I wasn't sure, and figured I was just thinking of how Google Talk clears the messages.
Not a huge deal to me, but it would definitely be nice if they would fix this. Our best bet is to make a post on the help forums with a bunch of posts in it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If I get some time I'll put up a bug report on Google Groups/Google Code.
Edit: Nevermind! Someone's on it already from February: https://code.google.com/p/android/i...on&colspec=ID Type Status Owner Summary Stars
I'd appreciate if you're having this issue to star and comment there (as well as here).

martonikaj said:
If I get some time I'll put up a bug report on Google Groups/Google Code.
Edit: Nevermind! Someone's on it already from February: https://code.google.com/p/android/i...on&colspec=ID Type Status Owner Summary Stars
I'd appreciate if you're having this issue to star and comment there (as well as here).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the link!
If anyone has a chance, they should make a post in the Google Voice forums here (I'll try to do it later when I have a chance if no-one else gets to it): http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!categories/voice/using-google-voice-on-a-mobile-device. I heard that Google Engineers do monitor / read these sometimes, so if we all post in a thread there is a chance it will get read / fixed.
I really wish there was a better way to get stuff like this fixed.

Bit late to the party. Just wanted to chime in that in my experience I don't think I've ever seen the GV notification clear itself after checking the web interface on my computer.
I've been using android for a year now and have gone through 3 phones and the asus transformer tablet. My current phone is running a CM9 based rom, but still it doesn't clear these notifications.
Man, I'd love it if it did.
Note: I think that if you use the GV widget, you will see that the notification on the widget DOES clear after checking the web interface (or at least it did in GB because I just tested this on my current phone and widget doesn't clear it either). I suppose this means that GV is pushing the "read" status of an sms to our phones. The notification on the notification bar, however, still persists despite this.
EDIT: Given my last test on my current phone, it looks like the widget doesn't clear the notification like it used to on GB. It looks like it is, in fact, a syncing issue.

LeoBloom. said:
Bit late to the party. Just wanted to chime in that in my experience I don't think I've ever seen the GV notification clear itself after checking the web interface on my computer.
I've been using android for a year now and have gone through 3 phones and the asus transformer tablet. My current phone is running a CM9 based rom, but still it doesn't clear these notifications.
Man, I'd love it if it did.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I can confirm that it actually did used to clear when viewed on another device, and this is the intended action. It should work exactly like an IMAP e-mail account (say, the GMail app). If you view a message on the device or in a web browser, it is cleared as read on the other. Google Voice used to do the same, and stopped doing so randomly. It's completely a backend problem.

Really wish they would fix this. Still happening on JB. Very annoying for those of us who text from the web all day.

xdp said:
Really wish they would fix this. Still happening on JB. Very annoying for those of us who text from the web all day.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Still a problem, go over to the google group link posted above and star the issue to (hopefully) increase it's priority and visibility:
https://code.google.com/p/android/i...s Owner Summary Stars&groupby=&sort=&id=25301

Text alerts for *sent* messages as well as received since update

Apologies if I am posting this in the wrong spot. I have a Pixel 2 XL(obviously) and had been on the Android beta program for some time now. The android p beta had been running really solid for me with no issues. So when they pushed it out officially last week i of course went for it. However, all of a sudden now, when *sending* texts, it gives me a notification sound (same as incoming notification). Anyone run into this? I searched the forums briefly but didnt see anyone with the issue although I couldve missed it.
Note- I'm using the Google Messages(I believe thats the official name) app, I just prefer it to Hangouts. I did check the settings, and disabled the setting for outbound notification sounds- but it persists.
Here's the kicker- it cant be isolated to just me, as my mom has the same phone -she messaged me last week and asked if she should update (I'm typically the guinea pig) and I said yep, been rock solid for me.. now she's getting the exact same behavior. So barring it being the messages app itself which i suppose is possible, I dont know.
Thoughts? Suggestions? I havent tried a different messenger app yet, suppose I could(textra maybe), I'm just partial to this one for whatever reason.
Thanks in advance!

Disregard. I guess its specific to Android Messages app. Installed another text app and the issue went no longer occurs.

I have the same issue with my Android Messages app