Texting trouble

RainbowsInTheSpray

Can anyone help with this, please?

I recently acquired a smart phone for the first time after many years of dumb phone use. One thing I noticed almost immediately was that SMS messages were failing to send on a regular basis... maybe one time in every four? Leave it for an hour or two and then, yes, magically the self-same message sends without a problem. What is happening? It doesn't seem to relate to local signal strength or anything like that.

Billxx

More info required please.  Make of phone? Operating system (OS) version number?  What carrier are you using?  Does it behave differently when on WiFi or cellular?
Is the phone new or pre used?

Sorry to ask so many questions...

RainbowsInTheSpray

It's a cheap Oppo A16. Late version of Android... exact version unknown. I'm with O2. I thought SMS always transmitted via mast network... no?

Neil_Jones

RainbowsInTheSpray said:

It's a cheap Oppo A16. Late version of Android... exact version unknown. I'm with O2. I thought SMS always transmitted via mast network... no?

SMS does go over the mobile network but the SMS app on Android received an update a few years ago to add functionality from Google Chat for prettier messages, where supported.  However this requires a network connection (data or Wi-Fi) so it will go when there is a network connection, so if you want normal SMS you have to turn that off (or leave data on).

https://support.google.com/fi/thread/4186226/why-is-android-messages-now-requiring-me-to-turn-on-either-wifi-or-mobile-data?hl=en

RainbowsInTheSpray

Neil_Jones said:

RainbowsInTheSpray said:

It's a cheap Oppo A16. Late version of Android... exact version unknown. I'm with O2. I thought SMS always transmitted via mast network... no?

so if you want normal SMS you have to turn that off (or leave data on).

Well, I never. Wanting something which was previously 'normal' suddenly becomes ten times more complicated with a 'smart' phone... who knew, eh? Geeks rule,ok...