Incomplete Group Texts - AT&T Lumia 950

[Indistinguishable]

I tried the hard reset, no luck. I turned off Enhanced 4g LTE services, no luck.

I was having this issue with a friend rocking an LG G5. We found a solution. He needed to turn off Enhance 4G LTE on HIS device. That did the trick.

 

[mkawiecki]

this worked!! Thank you!

Recap: turn off enhanced 4g lte on the android. It won't turn off 4g data just HD voice which is no big deal for most.

 

[kasssa]

It also happens with Lumia 920 (two different ones)...

 

[Jim Walsh3]

Thankful I found this thread and hoping turning off enhanced 4g lte on my daughters android will work. Very frustrating for the past month as my wife and I both have the 950 and my daughter has an S7 and we cannot group text with her.

Unbelievable that its been happening for so long based on this thread with no recognition from ATT

 

[JGrotel]

Super helpful, this fix worked, thanks all! Was driving me crazy. (me: Lumia 950, daughter: iPhone 6s, my wife: Galaxy 6) I had been getting one-letter replies from my wife on all group texts. Turned off this LTE setting on the Galaxy 6 and now all is well.

 

[EMitchell]

This has been happening with us. Group texts sent from a Samsung S7 to the rest of us in the family is resulting in full texts received by another S7, but the Lumia 950 and Lumia 1020 are only receiving the first letter. It doesn't matter which S7 sends the text, both Windows phones are seeing it. The L950 has Win10, the L1020 has Win8.1. No inside ring on either Windows phone, straight ATT releases. One-on-one texts are working fine, it's only group texts with the issue.

 

[ananimus]

Just switched to a Lumia 950 from an 8.1 L735. Started having this problem on a thread with the family. Texted one cousin directly and she says, yes, her and her sister have both been having group text problems the last couple months. Both are Samsung devices (I think both ATT). Will try this at Christmas if there's time to mess with such things.

Anyone know how to resolve having to manually click "download message" for group texts before they appear in the thread? My 8.1 device was also doing this.

 

[ananimus]

Based on other searches, the "Enhanced 4G LTE" feature for MMS on Samsung devices could be a problem. Mentioned that to one cousin. She turned off the feature (without telling me). That fixed the problem and I got all of her group messages for a couple days!

On Christmas the three of us talked about it. She told me she quietly turned it off to see if it did anything. The other cousin's phone continued to send only one letter group messages.

However, the one who said she got it to work then also said she lost the "iPhone-like" ability to send uncompressed pictures, not-grainy videos, and see when someone had read messages. She then apologized to me and turned the feature back on right in front of me.

So yeah. Dunno how to fix it from our end, but there's yer problem. Some fancy new Samsung features don't appear totally backwards compatible. My mom's old flip phone has the same problem, getting one letter or simply nothing!

 

[Guru 42]

I have been having this issue more often in recent months --> Group texts sent from a Samsung to the rest of us in the family is resulting in full texts received by another Samsung, but the Lumia phones are only receiving the first letter. I have a Lumia 640xl, other family members have various Samsung models.

After searching for weeks on this issue this is the first thread I found where it appears there has been some troubleshooting progress made!

Going to the AT&T website, there is a self proclaimed expert that answers every SMS question with, " SMS message delivery is not guaranteed," but I have yet to find any thread there that points to an issue with enhanced 4g LTE services.

I can experiment with various family members and tell them that they need to turn off enhanced 4g LTE and see what happens, but what about people who I can't control their settings?

Initially I thought that perhaps it was a local bandwidth issue (with AT&T), but the more research I have done seems to point to the "Enhanced 4G LTE Services" features on various phones.

I have found various forum posts that "fix" the problems by turning off "Enhanced 4G LTE Services" on Samsung phones. I have also found similar threads for Nexus phones on T-Mobile.

So far the only common thread seems to be the issues are with Android devices and Enhanced 4G LTE Services. I will update this answer as I find additional information.

 

[ananimus]

"SMS message delivery not guaranteed" is a pretty remarkable cop out!

I was surprised how hard it was to find any other mention of it. Mostly recent Samsung devices are the source of the problem, and one thread noted many other receiving phones besides Windows Phones not getting it, as I see on my mom's flip phone.

IPhones are the only others not seeming affected, but apparently this feature was made to emulate the messenger service on iPhone, so...

One thread suggested special provisioning of the source device may have helped but there was no follow up.

My 950 has Straight Talk service through ATT. I tried some newer APN settings, but there was no effect.

I want to say I didn't have this problem on my 735 with WP8.1. However now I'd have to go check. It did start having strange MMS problems in groups. But I'm not sure failed delivery was one, except one Samsung device that consistently "sent" blank group messages to it.

If there's anyway to fix this on the receiving end, it'd be fantastic! Since as witnessed with my cousin, she didn't want to keep it off once she noticed the side effects.

 

[ananimus]

Advert for the culprit service: https://forums.windowscentral.com/e...ures%2Fadvanced-messaging.html&token=LuskkH_O

Too bad turning it off isn't something recipients can manage! :winktongue:

 

[Deahsalas]

This has been happening with us. Group texts sent from a Samsung S7 to the rest of us in the family is resulting in full texts received by another S7, but the Lumia 950 and Lumia 1020 are only receiving the first letter. It doesn't matter which S7 sends the text, both Windows phones are seeing it. The L950 has Win10, the L1020 has Win8.1. No inside ring on either Windows phone, straight ATT releases. One-on-one texts are working fine, it's only group texts with the issue.

I just started using a Samsung S7 and my husband is using his Lumia 950. I followed the steps described and turned off the enhanced 4G LTE on my Samsung. It says any messages sent will be in the form of an MMS. I guess the Lumia can't process HD voice enhanced 4G LTE things and can only recognize messages via SMS and MMS. That makes a lot of sense to me. I hope it stays fixed.

 

[jergernawt]

Read this somewhere else and it worked.
On the Samsung device turn of "advanced texting"
it limits the Samsung to a 1 MB message but it works. Oddly this problem has cropped up on my Lumia 950 from my daughters Galaxy 5 and now my wifes Galaxy 7 Edge.
Happily resolved

 

[pet_trace]

We are having similar issues, d has lumina 950 win 10.0.xxx. m has Nokia 909 win 8.1.xxx, s has Samsung s6 android 6.0.1, T has s5 same android system. M and d get truncated message in group texts that include s but not truncated from T. T can see full message. Both s and t are using default messaging app and keyboard.