iOS holding my phone number hostage = the worst bug I’ve ever experienced

Just think, if you hadn't used a proprietary messaging solution as your default contact method, you'd be able to easily control how you receive the messages. Maybe stuff like this happening is a good thing as it drills home the point the 'crazy free software lunatics' have been going on about for some time. Having this kind of thing happen to someone makes the stuff FSF+co says a bit more relevant and ultimately helps everyone.

This has been happening for over 2 years now. I&#x27;ve met multiple people in real life (including total non-techies) that have run into this. It&#x27;s more common than you&#x27;d think. Basically anyone moving from an iPhone to Android (or any other phone I assume) will have this problem.<p>At this point, it&#x27;s obvious Apple is ok with this. It&#x27;s a giant &quot;fuck you&quot; to anyone moving away from them and it leaves a bad taste in your mouth knowing they do this purposely.

Preventative step: set your outbound iMessage &quot;caller id&quot; to your email address instead of your phone number. Do this now, before you&#x27;re bitten by the bug. (Apple&#x27;s degraded QA as of late on iOS means you&#x27;ll also have to change it back on ALL your devices on the account any time you add or remove any devices or numbers to iMessage or FaceTime on that Apple ID, too.)<p>This way, all your contacts are iMessaging with your email address, not your phone number. It means it will keep working when you travel internationally and switch SIM cards, and it means you can disable it easily via your Apple ID should you ditch the iPhone.

Some &quot;bugs&quot; are only fixed with class action lawsuits. This &quot;bug&quot; has been around for a while now and Apple <i>can</i> fix it they just don&#x27;t prioritize bugs that allow people to switch away from them easily.<p>It is fraud to fail to deliver messages to my phone when I&#x27;ve switched phones. It shouldn&#x27;t take me calling you, it should happen automatically and in under a day.

I know a ton of people who have this problem, it&#x27;s a huge issue. My mom recently switched to a Moto X and couldn&#x27;t get any text messages from my sisters. When she called Apple for support, they told her they would not help her unless she paid a fee for phone support. Read that again: they wanted her to pay extra money to properly leave their ecosystem. If they wanted her to come back to Apple it backfired, she&#x27;ll never touch another iDevice after that snub.

I&#x27;m experiencing the same problem, I&#x27;ve tried:<p>1) Turning off iMessage on old iPhone 2) Removing phone number from my Apple account 3) Friends removing my cell # from their address books<p>and a few other random things. Nothing has fixed it. The only way a friend with an iOS device can SMS me is if <i>they</i> turn of iMessage. This is a pretty huge bug on Apple&#x27;s part.

Same problem here and I know quite a few people who&#x27;ve had these issues as well.<p>iMessage is a huge mess - even if you&#x27;re still using your iPhone. Back in December, when I was still on iPhone, I went in a month-long trip abroad. Since data roaming still costs a fortune, I had data switched off most of the time. I&#x27;d just connect on wifi whenever possible and occasionally switched on the data connection when I really needed to get online while on the go.<p>Yet, despite the fact that I was roaming and that I had my data connection switched off, most of the text messages that my iOS-using contacts sent me were sent via iMessage instead of plain SMS. Which meant that I&#x27;d only get their message when I went back online, hours and sometimes days later.

Ah, this sounds familiar. I recently got a new cell phone number, using an Android phone. Some days later, a few of my fellow carpoolers told me after texting me that they were getting replies from someone else telling them they had the wrong number! I was stumped, until we noticed all the people who were failing to text me were using iPhones.<p>I texted my own number using one of their phones and asked the mystery recipient if she recognized my phone number. Apparently, it was her old number: still attached to her iMessage account. She removed it, but weeks later, I still don&#x27;t receive any texts from iPhone users. Guess I&#x27;ll have to check in with AT&amp;T&#x2F;Apple about it.<p>tl;dr: This bug can affect you even if you have never owned an iPhone.

Exact. Same. Issue. All their solutions do not work. I&#x27;ve reset Apple ID and wiped all my old iOS devices. Roughly 90% of my friends cannot text me anymore.<p>What&#x27;s comical about this is how easy it is to fix: have a cache that breaks weekly; upon new text message, ping Apple HQ and see if device is iOS and has iMessage installed; great, save for a week.

This article claims resetting your apple ID password will disassociate the imessage phone number: <a href="http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5538" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;support.apple.com&#x2F;kb&#x2F;HT5538</a>

The same thing happened to me when I broke my iPhone a few months back. I ended up speaking to 3 or 4 different representatives explaining that I had removed the phone number from all my iDevices, but couldn&#x27;t turn iMessages off from the device. I went so far as borrowing a friend&#x27;s phone, and getting a new phone number associated with my Apple account. The solution that ended up working for me was changing the password associated with my Apple account.<p>I don&#x27;t understand why Apple doesn&#x27;t have a solution to this yet. It was obviously going to be a problem from the start.<p>The people I feel worst for are those who get a phone number that used to belong to an iPhone user. They may miss texts without any idea what is going on, and without any recourse to fix it.

I had the same issue when switching to a Nexus 5.<p><a href="https://appleid.apple.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;appleid.apple.com</a> Try going here and removing the phone number from the &quot;Phone Numbers&quot; section. I still have friends who try to message me and their iOS assumes I&#x27;m using iMessage. The &quot;retry as SMS&quot; feature is the only method that works.

I recently had this exact problem.<p>THE FIX: Log in to your Apple support profile, go to the devices section, then unregister all the iOS devices associated with your account.

Changing your number should not be the solution to this problem. I recently switched from iOS to Android and have been experiencing the same issues. The OP&#x27;s title says it best, &quot;IOS holding my phone number hostage.&quot; Changing my number would require an incredible amount of inconvenience. Apple needs to address this immediately.

I had this same problem and recently solved it by - putting my sim back into my old iOS phone. - reactivating iMessage on the old phone WITH the sim inside of the old phone - wait to make sure the phone fully registers with iMessage servers - deactivate iMessage WITH the sim inside the phone<p>After following these steps, I&#x27;m not problem free. I had tried many times before to reactivate&#x2F;deactivate iMessage, but never with the sim back in the device.

I recently made exactly ths same switch, and unsurprisingly had exactly this issue. I resolved it by turning on my iPhone, putting it in airplane mode, and turning on wireless.<p>I then went into Settings &gt;&gt; Messages and turned off iMessage. All the iPhones that had previously been trying to send me messages via iMessage then started routing messages to me via text.

The saddest part about this story is perhaps the fact that iMessage was supposed to be open and allow other phone builders to use it. Having it truly cross-platform in the first place would have avoided a situation like this :(

&gt;IOS<p>Hacker News&#x27;s automatic capitalisation strikes again! I thought this was about Cisco IOS for a moment.

Did you try putting your SIM card back into your iPhone, then going to Settings &gt; Messages and turning off iMessage over there? Make sure you have an internet connection too so it can &quot;broadcast&quot; your new status to Apple HQ. This is what I do when I&#x27;m abroad and don&#x27;t want to dataroam. It&#x27;s possible you already tried that and it won&#x27;t make a difference - I don&#x27;t use group messaging a lot.

What is the radar number for this bug? You did file a bug report, right? <a href="http://bugreport.apple.com" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;bugreport.apple.com</a><p>If not... you should do so.<p>If you give people the radar number they can duplicate it at that same site and raise its priority.

The same thing happened to my Mom when she switched to Android this past Christmas. The solution in that case was to get her to connect her old iPhone to the Internet via Wi-Fi, and then disable iMessages.<p>I assume that you would need to disable iMessages on all your iDevices in order to remedy the problem.

Wouldn&#x27;t it work to lend an iPhone, turn it on with the SIM holding the number and then switch off iMessages there? Wouldn&#x27;t this invalidate the cached account in other iPhones?

I know it&#x27;s annoying but the best solution here just seems to change your number. Don&#x27;t lose your mind over this one.<p>edit : seems like people don&#x27;t understand my post. If you have a voice, the good thing to do is to make a blog post and submit it to websites like HN. The guy did it, now what can he do if he needs a quick fix? If he&#x27;s in rush? Change number. It&#x27;s really not that terrible and I do it every year without trouble.

I&#x27;m currently having to deal with this too. The best solution that I found was switching my number and keeping the iPhone, jailbreaking it, and installing BiteSMS with forwarding.<p>It&#x27;s kinda a pain and of course I have to pay to keep the iPhone around.

Rather than telling your friends to delete their entire history, what&#x27;s the problem with asking them to just make a new contact listing? I&#x27;m not familiar with the gubbins of iMessage.

Changing your Apple Id Password works like a charm too. It will log you out of your iMessage services. I did this when I switched to Galaxy Note 3.

&gt;But to ask my wife, my sister, my best friends, and literally every person I know to delete THEIR message histories? You’ve got to be kidding me!<p>That is true, but not because of photos - don&#x27;t they keep backups?<p>I guess this is why not to use vendor lock-in software instead of a globally accepted standard for basic communication.

I too switched to Android after Apple released iOS7 and have been having similar issues. The only solution I&#x27;ve found so far that still doesn&#x27;t fix 100% of the problems is by asking friends and relatives to log out of iMessage, restart their phone then log back in.

Solution wise, even if iOS devs created a fix to purge the cache older than X weeks and to recechk it would still require all your friends to install the update before it takes affect, so I don&#x27;t even see a fully fixed and timely solution to this.

I&#x27;ve had similar problems when switching between Android &amp; iOS devices over the years with both T-Mobile and AT&amp;T. It was a bit perplexing the first couple times it happened. Then I got used to the drill.<p>The solution, at least in my situation, was to call the carrier. Apple wasn&#x27;t at fault.<p>Both T-Mobile and AT&amp;T would fail to complete all steps required for the transfer, and therefore still showed the old device as the active one. A simple call resolved the issue.<p>In a couple instances, AT&amp;T &amp; T-Mobile would resolve the issue. Then I&#x27;d see the same behavior again weeks later. Sure enough, they had reverted to the old device on my profile. Calling them again resolved the issue.

For those who want to extol the virtues of FSF, do note the following:<p>1) GSM is neither free(both in free beer and free to distribute) nor open-source 2) The phone that you are using, no matter how &#x27;free&#x27; the software are, the hardware are mostly proprietary and those manufacturers aren&#x27;t very FSF friendly (now getting better, but still way to go) 3) Phone manufacturers tend to add proprietary drivers&#x2F;apps on top of Android, which renders the whole system not 100% free software either, so by saying iOS is closed-source, it is kind of like pot calling kettle black.

This has to be _the_ most common issue with caches anywhere anytime.<p>When and how do you invalidate.<p>My own example - I have Youtube comments that were up for a few hours before I deleted them. They still appear on my G+ history :-(

This is a serious problem and I&#x27;m gonna let him finish, but I get a huge amount of schadenfreude from hearing about the suffering of someone who sends a lot of group MMSes.

My daughter had a similar problem. She has no data plan on her iPhone and she found that texts from some friends seemed to be delayed. Messages were not being sent&#x2F;received until she connected to Wi-Fi.<p>To fix, her friends who previously used iMessage to reach her had to start a new SMS conversation (or turn off iMessage entirely). If her friends just continued the conversations that started via iMessage, she could not get them via SMS.

Wow. I switched to Android before iMessage came out, but I sure as heck will triple check if this has been fixed before ever consider an iPhone again.

What&#x27;s worse is that Apple iMessage servers seem to cache your phone number for a long time too... Even new message threads from my friends were trying to send as iMessage, even long after I got rid of my iPhone, disabled iMessage everywhere, and deleted any association of my phone number I could find. (I too switched from iOS to Android.) I find this crazy, that Apple lock you in like that.

Also, the default messaging app in Android may or may not be helpful. I&#x27;ve found Ninja to be the better way to go when dealing with SMS with the Apple folks yet to leave iOS.<p><a href="http://mergy.org/2013/12/problems-getting-group-smsmms-from-ios-on-android-get-ninja-sms/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;mergy.org&#x2F;2013&#x2F;12&#x2F;problems-getting-group-smsmms-from-...</a>

I&#x27;ve noticed lately that texts to people switching from iPhone to Android will fail and require user interaction.<p>When did this change? I recall texting a friend a couple years back, and it automatically failed over to SMS. I remember this explicitly because I was in Mexico at the time, and it led to a few extra bucks in special charges for texting in a foreign country.

I had this same problem and the best case fix seems to be to reset your Apple ID password; this forces you to log out from all devices, and so iMessage will at least error out for people who try and text you. But their devices will never go back to normal texts unless they specifically force it too, and that kind of lock-in is utter bullshit.

I had a friend who went through this same issue, for about a week i wondered why he never replied to me, until we talked about it and i realized the situation he was in. It&#x27;s a terrible bug, apple seriously need to address this.<p>I get why they wouldnt want to, but to me this is a shady as a broken &quot;Unsubscribe from this email&quot; link.

Turning off iMessage on her iPhone, making sure any references to iMessage in any device settings (including OSX) related only to an email address not a cell number before moving to Android meant my girlfriend didn&#x27;t experience any issues. Not sure if that&#x27;s a panacea and she was just lucky though ..

Changing my iTunes password worked for me.

You can unlink your phone number from iMessages, and even deactivate iMessages totally avoiding this problem...

Had the same thing happen to me with a friend (me on iOS, him on iOS-&gt;Android) - it seemed to me that the trick was to press &#x27;Send as Text Message&#x27; when the message fails to deliver. From then, it seems to work fine, as that probably forces a check on the Apple ID validity.

I had the same issue, and after isolating the problem to iOS clients like the author did, I had some success by having iMessage users remove and re-add me as a contact. Obviously not a good general solution, but it&#x27;s better than having them delete every message chain.

A fairly simple solution would be to get a Google Voice number, that would forward to your real number - and have people text you via Google Voice. However, if anybody calls (or sends an old-style SMS to) your old number, it would still come through.

I&#x27;m having what I think is the same problem just from getting my broken iPhone 5 replaced with a new one. Same deal with tech support - very nice, but not able to solve the problem. Sounds like a bug in iOS that could seriously stand fixing.

Same thing happened to me when I switched to Windows Phone. I didn&#x27;t realize it until my iPhone was long gone. I un-registered my iPhone on Apple&#x27;s site and about a month later, iPhone users could text me again.

This is worrying as my Mum&#x27;s iPhone just bit the dust and we replaced it with an Android phone. I&#x27;m hoping that she doesn&#x27;t experience the same issues with her friends and family (many of whom use iPhones).

I have the same issue. I called apple support and they simply could not help me.

When I upgraded to Android 4.3 I believe Google asked if I wanted to route my messages through Hangouts (Google+). I assume this would send everything through Gchat&#x2F;Google+ wherever possible and skip SMS...

When I was on IOS I regularly turned off imessage and back on again to refresh contacts. It&#x27;s a pain in the ass, but it helped ease the pain of my friends switching to android before I did.

I had this same issue, it was so bad I just went back to the iPhone.

This is the problem with bolting proprietary standards on top of legacy methodology.<p>I do swear that iOS by default does send SMS after 5 minutes if it can&#x27;t do it over iMessage though?

This isn&#x27;t a bug. How do you expect it to work? It&#x27;s probably not just expected behavior, but an intentional form of vendor lock-in.

I noticed this over the last 2 weeks. I switched my mobile data off, and now I don&#x27;t get SMS from my friends until I return home.<p>Nice one Apple.

I had this happen to me, and I was only able to receive texts on my new S4 after disabling iMessage on my old iPhone and iPad.

I&#x27;ve got exactly the same problem here, has anyone found a solution (other than not using iMessage in the first place)?

It probably costs like $5 to change your phone number. I think that&#x27;s the best option at this point.

Yup, have been hit by this, but not as bad as I use both platforms. Glad you wrote about it though.

I have a question for mobile developers...<p>is Apple the only one making this mistake?

This is why you disable iMessage before turning your device in.

Try switching back to iOS then forward to android again?

You should seriously improve your blog’s contrast, especially regarding small text. The background is around #F5F1F8 while the text is #888588 (which is not enough to meet WC3 recommendations).

Time to switch your friends to WhatsApp

Steve Jobs dies and everything goes to hell. Tim Cooks biggest innovation was the Apple Dividend.

If message histories are your only copy of family&#x2F;friends photos, you&#x27;re doing it wrong.