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Android Text Messages Intermittently Going Astray

Posted by Soulskill on from the digital-foot-in-mouth dept.

theodp writes "Reports from Engadget and others suggest that Tiger Woods and Brett Favre might want to avoid Android for the time being. It seems Android's default text messaging app still has horrible text messaging bugs that can that intermittently send texts to the wrong person. 'This is ticking me off like no other technology glitch that I experienced in recent years,' reads one unhappy camper's post on a lengthy Help Forum thread opened on March 16th. 'If a bank deposited my paycheck into another person's account I wouldn't stress so much cause I can always get the money back. How the hell do you take words back? "Oh sorry boss you had to find out that I think you're an idiot, can I still keep my job, please please please?"' Over at Google Code, Issue 9392 — SMS are intermittently sent to wrong and seemingly random contact — carries a priority of 'Medium,' even though it has 600+ comments and has been starred by 3,600+ people."

6 of 325 comments (clear)

  1. Google support by Animats · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Eventually, Google may have to realize that some of their products actually require customer support.

    1. Re:Google support by Totenglocke · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Bugger the exorbitant cost, my next phone will be an iPhone 4. I'm sure it'll have foibles of its own, but they're unlikely to be in the basic usage.

      As long as you don't count making a phone call or the alarm working "basic usage". =D

      --
      "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
  2. Re:Medium is appropriate... by CajunArson · · Score: 5, Insightful

    but not a performance or security related issue.

    Randomly sending SMS messages to the wrong recipient is a huge performance and security bug. Performance: if the intended recipient does not get the message, the phone is not performing a basic function correctly and the effective messaging performance is zero. Security: It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that sending SMS messages to the wrong people could definitely have a negative effect on user privacy, making this a BIG security bug.

    --
    AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
  3. This is fucking hilarious. by the+linux+geek · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I can tell you right now that if Microsoft Outlook had a bug that sent emails to random contacts, we would not be seeing comments that say "Never happened to me, so not an issue" or "Don't blame Microsoft, there are other clients available."

    Oh, and the "fix it yourself" people need to shut the fuck up too. That's fine when it's an open-source project with fifty users hosted on sourceforge, not when it's in-production software that runs on millions and millions of phones.

  4. Re:It's open source by icebike · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The value of a text message is what ever the customer will pay for it. It has nothing at all to do with cost.

    Android comes with Google Talk. It is Free (included in your data plan) and is not arbitrarily limited to 160 characters.

    ON most cell networks, SMS messages utilize a signaling path that is used to notify phones of call arrival. (Specifically using the Mobile Application Part (MAP) of the SS7 protocol).

    That path has a finite capacity. When that path is busy, calls go direct to voice mail without so much as a ring on your handset.

    This type of traffic needs to be moved to the data plan instead of the network signaling path. Google Talk (which is simply Jabber) is the perfect tool for this and works across all platforms (cell phones, computers, tablets, etc).

    --
    Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
  5. Re:Talk about bugspam... by rmcd · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You're right about starring rather than spamming, but the attention had the intended effect. The priority is now marked critical.